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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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H Booh of Derse 

B^ Joseph Cook ^ 



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an^telltbcm" 



NEW YORK 

Zhc fcntclietbocfiet pte00 
1903 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies Received 

APR t4 1903 

Copyright Entry 
ClXsS Ct- XXe. No. 

copy B. / 






Copyright, 1903 

BY 

GEORGIANA HEMINGWAY COOK 



TTbe "Rnfcfierbocfter pxcee, Ikcvf ]t?otft 



FOREWORD 

THE first two poems of this little volume appeared 
a quarter of a century ago in Harper s Monthly 
Magazine. Other verses have already been published 
in various periodicals. 

The Boston Hymns were written to be sung with 
organ accompaniment at the opening devotional ser- 
vice of the Boston Monday Lectures, and will be re- 
called by many among the great audiences that filled 
Park Street Church and Tremont Temple on these oc- 
casions during more than twenty years. 

Though aware that the Hymns were not always 
faultless in technique, the author desired to give ex- 
pression in them to the fundamental truths of our most 
holy faith, to him most precious. 

While poetry was not the chief chord struck on his 
harp of life, great spiritual truths seemed to him to find 
their best utterance in verse. Keenly sensitive to 
beauty in the natural as in the spiritual world, he ever 
listened joyfully to this vibrating overtone, which 
penetrated his life, as it gives name to this book. 

G. H. C. 



CONTENTS 



Poems of Places : 




Ticonderoga and Montcalm 


3 


The Rhine from the Odenwald 


17 


Cliff Seat Rainbows 


23 


Suns and Souls at Lake George 


26 


An Exile's Return to the Adirondacks 


28 


At John Brown's Grave 


30 


Breaking the Mississippi's Yoke 


32 


Ingleside 


34 


Ten Archangels 


35 


Oregon Cathedrals 


37 


Yosemite 


39 


Golden Gate 


40 


Sydney Heads 


42 


Japanese Couplets : 




May 


45 


June 


47 


July 


49 


August 


51 


September 


53 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

October 55 

November 56 

Verses : 

Orpheus and the Sirens 59 

Gem A- Wing 61 

Forest Ermine 63 

A Snow Song 65 

Chanticleer 66 

Song of the Old Silurian Shore 6"] 

A Memory of the Forest 69 

Lion and Eagle 70 

Transit 73 

Youth and Age 75 

The Soul's Thirst 76 

Tumbling Amber — An Omen "jy 

Bird of Both Twilights 79 

Sonnets : 

Niagara 85 

Sunset 87 

The Sky 88 

Washington after a Century 90 

St. James's Park 92 

St. Gaudens's Puritan 93 

Were Vision Open 94 

The Completion of Apollo 95 

In Praise of Trust 96 

A Reminiscence lOi 



Contents vii 



At Florence 


1 02 


Montmorenci 


103 


Sea Bathing 


104 


The Iroquois 


105 


Slaughtered Saints as Sovereigns 


106 


A Natural Supernatural 


107 


A Far Shore 


108 


DSTON Hymns : 




Igdrasil 


III 


The Touch of the Unseen 


113 


God's Bliss 


115 


Creed of Certainties 


117 


Better He 


119 


Love of Love 


121 


Heaven and Home 


123 


God's Time Now 


125 


Christus Consummator 


127 


Christus Consolator 


128 


Volcano Crests 


130 


Sursum Oculos 


132 


Sursum Corda 


134 


The World's Marseillaise 


136 


Noon of Noons 


137 


Open Furrows 


138 


God of Nations 


140 


Suns and Sparrows 


142 


God in Man 


143 


Forecast 


144 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

He Sufficeth 146 

Warp and Woof 148 

Evermore 1 50 

Flitting Wings 152 

In Extremis 154 

Mid-Day 156 

One Day in Seven 158 

Law and Love 159 

Dawn and Sunset 161 

The Sours Outcry 162 

Sealed Orders 163 

One Harvest Field 165 

Atonement 167 

Contrasts 169 

Sheep and Wolves 171 

A Nation's Lament 173 

Occident to Orient 175 

Faith, Hope, Love 177 

Friends Forever 179 

A World-Wide Plan 181 

Unseen Leaders 182 

Easter Anthem 183 

A Century's Dawn 184 



POEMS OF PLACES 



TICONDEROGA AND MONTCALM 

*' There have been far-sounding Epics built together on less basis 
than lies ready here, in this Capture of Quebec ; which itself, as the 
decision that America is to be English and not French, is surely an 
Epoch in World History." — Carlyle, History of Frederick the Great, 



FROM the iceberg to the palm-tree, 
As a giant check for giants, 
Stretch a flawless chain of French posts. 
Muskets, traders, priests, and cannon. 
From the cold sea to the hot sea. 
On our long path let the Northeast 
Sift the snow among the forests ; 
On our long path let the Southwest 
Sow the violets in the wet woods. 
France will shut the English up now 
East behind the AUeghanies. 
In her right hand is the oak-tree. 
In her left hand is the olive ; 
And she walks toward the sunset, 
And her couch is in the sunrise. 



Overtones 

From the Labrador St. Lawrence 

To the tropic Mississippi, 

From the arctic moss and reindeer 

And the Esquimaux ice village 

To the cotton blooms and rice-birds 

And the Mexic hills of silver, 

Let the woodlands give her welcome. 

Let the Great Lakes be our border. 

With these rivers we discovered : 

Choke the lion with the lilies. 

II 

So spake France and built her strongholds 

From the cold sea to the hot sea : 

On the gnarled hoarse shores in pine glooms 

Where the dun moose snuffs the salt fog, 

And the blue ice floats the walrus, 

And the snow-shoe tracks the smooth seal. 

And the whale's breath wakes the slow bear. 

And the North lights daze the white owl. 

In Acadia and bleak Brunswick ; 

Under mountains shagged with oak woods. 

Where the wolf howls from the gray cliff, 

And the clear springs wash the brown ores, 

And old war-paths thread the cascades. 

And the lilies fringe the lone lakes, 

And the whippowil drinks night-dew, 

At Crown Point, Ticonderoga ; 

In the quiver of the booming. 



Ticonderoga and Montcalm 5 

Where the rainbow spans the shot seas, 

And the awed clouds droop and listen, 

And the hushed stars quake at midnight, 

And a thunder flaps its vast wings, 

And ascendeth pauseless anthem. 

At Niagara and Erie ; 

In the darkling AUeghanies, 

Where the grim peaks nurse the lightning, 

And the swift stag flees the panther, 

And the beaver builds his wise weir, 

And the chanticleer struts sunward. 

And the lithe fish leap the loud brooks. 

At Duquesne and in Venango ; 

On the prairie's green round ocean. 

Where the foam of blossoms rustleth, 

And through emerald leagues the waves gleam, 

And the bison swim the grass sea. 

And the wide sky waketh wide thoughts. 

And the slant showers chase the sun-bursts, 

At Detroit and still Kaskaskia ; 

On the dateless mounds and maize fields. 

Where the old oaks grow in old graves. 

And the heaped earth traceth strange shapes, 

And a buried race sleeps nameless, 

And thronged ages hide in ashes, 

And the bent squaw plants the fat soil 

On the Wabash and Ohio ; 

Among cotton-trees and rice-birds, 

Where the red chief tames the wild horse, 



Overtones 

And the vexed herds flee the lasso, 
And the bayous steam in fierce suns, 
And the orange drops its gold globes, 
And the Gulf winds faint with incense, 
In Arkansas and New Orleans : 
Thus behind the Alleghanies 
Join the iceberg and the palm-tree. 

Ill 

**By the treaty made at Utrecht,'' 
Saith in Paris haughty Louis, 
With his statesmen of wide foreheads 
Toward the setting sun far-sighted, 
**By the long voyage of our Cartier, 
By the long voyage of our Joliet, 
All the lands are ours forever 
Which the Mississippi claspeth 
In his bosom or his fingers ; 
Or St. Lawrence, with the five lakes. 
In his bosom or his fingers ; 
All the lands and all the waters. 
See the Mississippi's left hand 
Twine with Alleghany vapors. 
As with forelocks of a giant ; 
And the Mississippi's right hand 
Twine with Rocky Mountain cloud-wrack. 
As with forelocks of a giant : 
His soft fingers soothe their stern thoughts. 
/ Thus the sunset is our sunrise : 



Ticonderoga and Montcalm 

Empire broader than was Caesar's, ] 
Realm more wide than Alexander's,' 
Valley fatter than was Pharaoh's; 
Waters prouder than the Danube, 
Current princelier than Euphrates, 
River mightier than the Nile stream ; 
Dun Missouri from the sunset. 
Green Ohio from the sunrise, 
Mississippi in the high noon — 
Ever oursj for so the sceptre 
And the starry Romish crosier, 
In the glittering hand of fair France, 
Shall be stretched across the New World, 
And be dipped in the Pacific." 

IV 

**By the treaty made at Ryswick," 
Saith green Britain to the French king, 
With her statesmen of wide foreheads 
Toward the setting sun far-sighted, 
**Are the subtle, stately red men. 
The leagued Iroquois Five Nations, 
Our allies, and own the sceptre 
In the sinewy hand of England. 
But Crown Point, Ticonderoga, 
For the swift canoe and snow-shoe, 
From the South to North the gateway, 
With Niagara, Ohio, 
For the swift canoe and snow-shoe. 



8 Overtones 

From the East to West the gateway, 
Are the ancient just possession 
Of the Iroquois Five Nations — 
Subtle, stern, and stately red men. 
Thus the sunset is our sunrise. 
Where their bow or hatchet ruleth, 
Roameth safe the British lion. 
In the Adirondack gorges, 
In Niagara's huge thunders, 
In Ohio's crackling forests, 
Croucheth fierce the British lion." 



So the loud, hot sky drips lightnings 
In the morning of the New World ; 
Burns while Washington and Braddock 
Smite the hemming links of fair France, 
Face the whistling bolts of battle, 
With a continent at hazard ; 
Burns while on the savage war-path 
Lone Fort Edward, where the Hudson, 
Under murmuring pines and hemlocks. 
Hears the panther and the owlet, 
And hushed Henry, on the Lake George- 
Mirror fit to gaze in God's face. 
Holy depths of stainless crystal, 
Sown with islands out of dream-land, 
Girt by green and solemn mountains. 
Wolf and eagle in their bosoms. 



Ticonderoga and Montcalm 9 

And the joy of all the seasons, 

Night and noon, the green and red leaf, 

Sun-lit snow-falls, sun-lit rain-falls, 

Dreaming moons and crimson twilights. 

Glassed Orion, day-star, Iris — 

Rise to shield the English border, 

Stay the hatchets, quench the fire-brands. 

Choke the war-whoops in the midnights ; 

Burns while proud Montcalm, to match them, 

Red and white and blue his standard. 

In the rustling sunny wildness 

Thinks of France, and plants her lilies 

In the grim Ticonderoga. 

Growl the gray walls in the green woods. 

Where the hoarse white Sounding Waters 

Meet the tawny Champlain billows; 

Where the sunrise kisses mountains 

In the blue and purple distance. 

And the mountains kiss the sunset 

In the bold transfigured nearness. 

He, himself a waxing new moon. 

Sees the slow moon's wane and waxing; 

He, himself an eagle restless. 

Sees the eagles pierce the noontide. 

VI 

Through the panting August forests 
And the lonely dreaming islands, 
Swoops Montcalm as swoops the eagle, 



lo Overtones 

Smites Fort Henry to its haunches; 
With the flame beaks of the cannon 
Tears it six slow-rolling sad suns ; 
Sends aloft in smoke its timbers. 
As the robins hush their dawn-song, 
See defenceless the brave vanquished, 
Under sighing forest arches, 
Huddle toward a distant shelter, 
Past the thunder-cloud of red tribes. 
Stretch their bowstrings, lithe Oneidas ; 
Lift their hatchets, lank Nepissings ; 
Poise their arrows, greedy Hurons; 
Whet their scalping-knives, Algonquins ; 
Whoop a death-whoop, Sacs and Foxes ; 
Slip a loose leash, gaunt, parched hell-dogs, 
Who the fair shore bathe in murder, 
In the rent graves plunder corpses. 
In the hot blood drench their hot lips. 
On the mountains hang the rainbows, 
And the ragged rims of thunder. 
And the maple drops her red leaf, 
And the blood-stain yet remaineth. 

VII 

Abercrombie answereth Montcalm, 
Strikes across the crystal lakelet 
When the summer fills the mountains. 
England's arm hath brawny muscles: 



Ticonderoga and Montcalm n 

See a thousand flashing barges, 

And the blue-coats and the red-coats, 

And the tartans from Loch Lomond, 

And the sunlight on the forests, 

And the mirrored oaks and maples, 

Breathing beeches, silver birches. 

Giant pines on mighty summits. 

Iris sheen and iris sparkles. 

And the sword glare in the waters ; 

Hear the pibroch from Loch Katrine, 

And the neighing of the horses. 

And the crackle of the armor, 

And the clashing of the oar-locks. 

And the sigh of harping islets, 

And the pebbly fret of white strands. 

And the dewy drip of bird songs. 

And the echoing of the bugles. 

Nine blue thousands are Provincials, 

Bred with panthers and the eagles. 

Men who smoothed a New World's rough face 

And the cradle of its future 

Rocked beneath its singing pine-trees, 

Putnam, Rogers, and his rangers ; 

Six red thousands British soldiers. 

Burnt by suns beyond the salt seas. 

Scarred in Fontenoy and Black Watch, 

Led by Howe, who on his bear-skin 

Couched last night and talked of triumph, 

But who goes to God to-morrow. 



12 Overtones 

From the giant tangled dark woods 

On the Trout Brook, at the ambush 

Wet with mist of roaring cascades, 

Floateth up his strong white spirit. 

See one lonely barge returning 

Where a thousand spanned the clear depths, 

Threads the islands with his black pall, 

Bears an army's heart beneath it. 

In the Abbey of Westminster 

Wrote his name young Massachusetts, 

Carved the word Ticonderoga 

On the proud and pallid marbles. 

VIII 

Wail the bugles through the forests. 
Wail and grieve and sound to onset. 
Fifteen thousand met four thousand ; 
But the four the fifteen vanquish ; 
For Montcalm across Carillon, 
As the fateful morning dawneth. 
Builds long breastwork of felled timbers 
Pierced for triple row of muskets, 
With an abatis as death-fringe — 
Leveled trees with sharpened branches — 
Bristling outward from the trenches. 
Rave the Highlanders with broadswords. 
Through the singing, leaden tempest. 
To the muzzles of the Frenchmen, 



Ticonderoga and Montcalm 13 

Until Duncan Campbell falleth ; 
But he cowereth at safe distance 
This red day faint Abercrombie : 
Seven hot hours the fifteen thousand 
Set their bare breasts to the bullets : 
Snuff the deer and scent the eagles 
From the mountains, taint of battle ; 
Shines the holy July sunlight 
On white lilies red with blood-stains ; 
In the holy July twilight, 
On the leaves before the French lines, 
Find two thousand their last slumber, 
Faces stark and eyelids open. 



IX 



From their blood-pools into God's face 

Look the dead men and find solace. 

From disaster courage riseth ; 

Now hath Pitt plans new and mighty ; 

In the hollow bone of danger 

Is the honey of wise boldness. 

Here are trained a people's sinews, 

Here grow stout the hearts of armies, 

Which are soon to quell the lion, 

As they follow the young eagle. 

But God's plan is yet advancing. 

And the end of it is not yet : 

From Lake George God sees red Concord, 



14 Overtones 

And the Lexington stained meadow, 

Bunker Hill, and Saratoga; 

From Lake George hears He already 

Sumter's bugles blow arousal, 

Clank of giant fetters riven. 

Guns of Gettysburg and Richmond. 

On a finger of God's right hand 

Stands the world's soft-spinning axle. 

When the lilies next are ripened. 

Strikes and throttles Amherst wary. 

By investment chokes the fortress ; 

While Montcalm and Wolfe together. 

In Quebec in mortal wrestle. 

Cross the flags of France and England 

High above the ocean river. 

In the audience of the ages ; 

Cross the glittering hand of fair France 

And the sinewy hand of England, 

With a continent hung balanced 

From the griping giant fingers. 



Slideth toward the Mississippi 

From the tops of Alleghanies 

And the peaks of Rocky Mountains 

Not a rill that doth not tremble ; 

All the springs that feed the Great Lakes 

Quiver in their leafy coverts. 



Ticonderoga and Montcalm 15 

Arctic mosses ask the prairies, 

And the prairies ask the tropics, 

And the reindeer ask the bison, 

And the bison ask the Gulf birds ; 

Blue Ontario asketh Erie, 

Huge Superior asketh Huron — 

Which of two will be their master ; 

And Niagara now listens. 

From the icy spur of Asia 

To the Cuban shore of spices. 

From the shivering Greenland lichens 

To the Mexic groves of orange, 

From the pole beneath the North Star 

To the palms beneath Orion, 

From the palms beneath Orion 

To the snows beneath the South Cross, 

Far vast future crystallizeth. 

With a hemisphere at hazard. 

As Wolfe hears, '' They fly ! they fly ! " 

From the cold sea to the hot sea 

Faileth France with Romish fashions. 

Shackled printing, voteless tenants. 

Scanty schools, and caste as ruler ; 

Triumphs England with caste waning, 

Sleepless printing, voting freeholds. 

Thick-sown schools, and open Bible. 

These the Mississippi drinketh ; 

Winneth these unborn Nevada; 

These now greeteth the Pacific 



1 6 Overtones 

From the iceberg to the palm-tree. 

Sing, Yosemite's tall cedars; 

Shout, far-soaring St. Elias ; 

Listen, Santee and Savannah ; 

Pause, Niagara, and listen : 

Onward strides a step colossal 

And the Pathos end not yet findeth; 

What at last our God performeth, 

From the first our God intendeth. 

All the past was predetermined ; 

All to come is now fore-ordered. 

See, accomplishing is God's plan, 

But the end of it is not yet ; 

And we know not what He will do, 

But we know that He now knoweth, 

And that His whole plan is perfect, 

Howsoever the half seem halting; 

And that what He doth is well done. 

And will bring with it amazement. 

On a finger of God's right hand 

Stands the world's soft-spinning axle. 

And His eye-beams swathe its whirled zones: 

Through the starry, soundless spaces 

Strideth on His step colossal; 

Moves the earth upon His finger, 

But His eye-beams go before it. 

Double Vista Island, Lake George. 



THE RHINE FROM THE ODENWALD 

I LOOK out from the Odenwald to France, 
Aerial, peopled, sun-lit, throbbing leagues, 
Across the nineteen crowded centuries, 
From Caesar vexing Rhine with its first bridge. 
And yokeless human streams with piers yet strong, 
And built upon by earth's new civil arch. 
In spite of Cassius' dagger and Time's tooth : 
From Tacitus, with weak, soft leprous Rome 
Ever in eye, praising the chastity 
Of German clans, as pure as were the dews 
The savage forests shook upon their heads; 
Unmelted men, and therefore kings, and sires 
Of nations now among the nations' kings: 
To Charlemagne's mailed hand, with arrow's edge, 
From Ebro to the Elbe, the human woods. 
Fruitless as yet and wild, but plump with sap, 
Grafting with slips from out the aged boughs 
Of Greece and Rome, beneath that new-risen sun 
His banners bore, whence plenteous fruit at last 
On Europe's age-long barren orchard slope: 
To billowy, hot, crusading myriads, 

2 

17 



1 8 Overtones 

The Western human sea, mixed still with slime, 

Green ridgy monsters in its crawling depths, 

And yet a sea responsive to Christ's name, 

As ocean with its tides to sun and moon. 

And swirling through this Rhine and Danube gate, 

Or past the clangorous Venetian wharves, 

To meet great Saladin at Ascalon ; 

The nobles sold their lands, and so the serf 

Grew free ; the fiefs of nobles slain became 

The king's, and so the king grew free; the towns 

The deluge filled, grown rich, bought new strange rights. 

Votes, armies, parliaments, self-government. 

And so the world grew free; Christ's grave not free 

Made Europe free; His pierced right hand the vote 

Placed in the trembling fingers of the poor; 

Fair Venice, threescore Rhine towns joining shields. 

Yon blood-washed Netherlands, strong Hansa's league, 

The burgher's right wrenched from a feudal world ; 

False John grew faint at Runny mede, and leaped 

In Magna Charta's womb America: 

To Greeks driven west from off the cultured shore 

Of Bosphorus, when fell Rome's eastern arch, 

Constantinople, like another Troy ; 

Now column, frieze, and pediment. 

From under Turkish hoofs snatched tenderly, 

Are built aloft afar when exiles found 

Rich Florence, Paris, this free Rhine ; and hence 

New tastes in all the West ; the huge fair shafts, 

With mystic traceries planned by Plato's eye 



The Rhine from the Odenwald 19 

And Aristotle's brain, bring Europe's morn 

Reflected from their Attic architraves ; 

The starry temple to the earth's last verge 

Yet copied ; Athens so by Greeks in white 

Immortal marble set on hills once more : 

To streams of Eastern caravans dried up ; 

And streams of gold in Genoa's mountain ports, 

And streams of gold in Venice's liquid streets 

The streams between the utmost East and West 

Fabled far Ind and Albion's poor hoarse coast, 

The giant, harvest-dropping, human Nile, 

Diverted, not made dry, by the New World 

Columbus opened in the sunset gold, 

And by the new way past the fearful cape 

To shores reached once only by camel ships 

Through seas of sand henceforth to sift unheard ; 

And so fat Spain made great, though rotten soon. 

And England great, but rotten not as yet ; 

And all this Pagan West as central made 

Upon the earth as once were Rome's seven hills, 

The Appian Way hung on Atlantic deeps. 

The transferred Tiber turned into the Rhine : 

To chivalry's and robbery's throned cliffs. 

Browbeating all these castellated shores, 

A chafing manacle on Europe's wrist. 

Burst suddenly when once the arm had strength. 

The gaping, ragged halves not welded yet. 

Save by the ivy's pitying thick veils: 

To Strasburg and Cologne, and skilled saints there 



20 Overtones 

Lifting majestically to peopled heavens 
Awe-struck stone anthems, not unheard of God, 
Cathedral epics, voice of man's tall hour: 
To eagles of the French, and in their beaks 
Fire-brands above this doomed Palatinate, 
A thousand smokes sent up from yonder plain : 
And Rhine waves red with hottest modern blood. 
And Rhine hills tremulous yet in all their vines 
With blows of him who made the Rhine a stream 
Of France, and with the Rhine lost France : and so 
To swiftly struck, far-resonant Sedan. 

I look against the sun which saw all this. 
And through the rustling air across his face 
Ride ghosts in number more than winter's flakes. 
My land swims far beyond that setting sun, 
Which burns the Vosges now and Niederwald ; 
These ghosts were not my brothers, yet they wrought 
For me, as I for those who follow us. 
My eyes were cold and dull were they not wet ; 
Sightless were they here cold and not elate. 
This Rhine plain bore its fruit for even me. 

God maketh some sods fat with sweat or blood. 
But grows in those spots seeds of preciousness. 
Which elsewhere could not root, but blown abroad, 
When once quite native in the globe, they touch 
Its utmost circuits, follow the rough gales 
To the remotest isles, and so all sods 



The Rhine from the Odenwald 21 

From one sod feed, and fill earth's whole deep lap. 
Gutenberg there at Mainz with printer's types; 
Luther with his ** God help me! " there at Worms; 
Spires there elate in spite of ghastly wounds ; 
This Heidelberg rained on by cannon seven times, 
Twice gutted by fierce pillage, thrice by flame — 
These wrought for England too, and she for me. 

And now America in Europe shines ; 
The light of White, not Red Democracy, 
At rising clear as Washington's own eyes. 
Mixed horribly too soon with blue-green flame 
From out the atheist throat of the French hell, 
And smoke and ashes of a feudal world. 
Grows white again unveiled above the bars 
Made by the vapors its own shining raised. 
Albion Republic all but in the name ; 
Berlin to-day thatches the peasant's roof. 
And swift wheels cleave the plains, and swifter words 
All seas. And Peace for once upon the Alps, 
In God's name in the shadow of Mont Blanc, 
Throttling the precedents of butchery. 
At fair Geneva yonder lifts aloft 
A white flag yet perhaps in cultured hands 
Of Saxon-belted, trade-leagued hemispheres. 
To chase from off the dolorous, cheated earth 
Barbaric black and outworn red of war : 
A white flag on which heaven breathes, so high 
It reaches to the steady upper minds 



22 Overtones 

That blow about the globe, untouched by jars 
Of local zephyr, breeze, or hurricane. 

There are no foreign lands. I yield at last. 
No great cause can be only local now. 
Here on the brink of nineteen centuries, 
And looking from the Odenwald to France, 
I cease to be only of my own coasts. 
One sea laves every shore : I hear its voice, 
Which, lifted from the solemn headlands vast, 
Or low sweet coves of time, doth sound in storm 
And calm ; doth ever sound ; did sound when man 
Was not ; and soundeth in all zones one sound. 
I will be citizen of the whole earth. 
Heights near Heidelberg Castle. 



CLIFF SEAT RAINBOWS 

FROM afar the thunder calleth, 
From afar my mountains greet me ; 
From afar reverberation, 
Where the lightning unsheathed shineth, 
Leaps immense along the summits, 
Soundeth there among the eagles. 

Eyrie girt with mountain grandeur, 
Tranceful stars and moons and sunsets, 
Peace hath Cliff Seat after tempests ; 
Hears the waterfalls and forests, 
And the bleating from the sheepfolds, 
And the singing of the robins. 
Brooklet bobolinks and thrushes, 
Mason swallows, hermit cuckoos. 
Vesper sparrows, plunging night hawks, 
Plaintive whippoorwills and owlets. 
Midnight songs of constellations. 
Morning stir of welcome labor. 
Sabbath chimes of rest and worship. 
And the echoes of a lifetime ; 
23 



24 Overtones 

Sees my childhood's sacred places 
In the green and solemn valley ; 
Sees the billowy, golden wheat fields 
And the sunny leas of clover ; 
Sees the paths of fathers* fathers, 
And the holy graves of kindred, 
And the rainbow arched above them. 

Stainless lakes with mountain margins 
Mirror heaven within their crystal, 
Sun and shadow fleck the forests. 
Dewy dawns the dells bespangle. 

In cathedral leafy arches 
Both the night and day are vocal. 
Tuneful brooks and sounding waters 
Fill the mountains with their murmurs, 
And the rainbows span the gorges. 

I am here but for a season ; 
Lo ! my home here and forever 
Is the hollow of God's right hand, 
And my roof-top is His rainbow. 

Ghosts unseen flit through the star beams, 
Over battle-fields and war-paths ; 
Where the footprints of great nations 
Scar the spots of fateful struggle. 
Round the rim of changing ages 



Cliff Seat Rainbows 25 

Walketh God in light and shadow ; 
Speaketh He to lands and peoples 
Both in sunbeams and in thunders. 
And God's plan is yet advancing, 
And its end He knows already, 
And that end no man yet knoweth, — 
But the rainbows span the ages. 



SUNS AND SOULS AT LAKE GEORGE 

VAST of brow, of front serene, 
Eagles in their breasts of green, 
Stand the heights the lake about, 
Uttering God's greatness out, 
As the air His tenderness, 
Luminous etherialness, 
Palpitant with soul, for He 
Throbs here omnipresently. 

To a sunny isle with me 
Sunny come fair maidens three ; 
In a rainbow dips the oar, 
God stands with us on the shore. 
Waves without are crystalline. 
Waves within are crystalline ; 
In the lake is not a stain. 
In the souls is not a pain. 

Well I love the water fair. 
Sister to the viewless air — 
Iris tints and sparkles thick 
Tossed from off the ripples quick ; 
Mirrored hills of silver sheen, 
26 



Suns and Souls at Lake George 27 

Stretched Elysian isles between ; 
Beams of noon and heights sublime, 
Majesties of dateless time; 

Subtle shafts of lancelike thrill, 
Shot from waters, wood, and hill ; 
Pebbly fret or plashing speech. 
Dreamy surge along the beach ; 
Granite chasms or sanded floor 
We by sun or moon float o'er — 
Depths in crystal trance that lie, 
Lucent, soft, glad endlessly. 

But I love yet more the souls. 
Glorious in parts and wholes. 
Whence is breathed a viewless air 
Fairer than the water fair — 
Souls in which the sparkles thick, 
Iris tints and ripples quick, 
Weave elate, celestial sheen, 
Stretched Elysian hours between ; 

Souls of noon and sky sublime. 

Up which awestruck summits climb ; 

Souls in which a seraph's thrill 

Subtly flames from holy will; 

Souls like lakes with white, deep floor, 

We by sun and moon float o'er — 

Depths in crystal trance that lie, 

Lucent, soft, glad endlessly. 



AN EXILE'S RETURN TO THE 
ADIRONDACKS 

HAIL, mountains, with your suns and moons. Your 
souls 
Have trumpet tones. Your inspiration rolls 
Upon my thoughts as surge on ocean shore ; 
Your moods my soul absorbs forevermore. 

My young heart built itself upon your heights, 
Breadths, majesties, aversions, and delights: 
From morn till eve, from eve till shadows flee, 
Entrancement is your kingly company. 

Who dares be weak, or worship not while ye 
Speak vastness, power, bold justice, liberty, 
Grand foresight, awe, long patience, massive calm. 
And love that bursts all bonds and holds all balm. 

What myriad graces in your endless woods, 

God working in ten thousand solitudes : 

Your dawns, your noons, your twilights, birds and buds 

Your crown of fir, your rocks, your glens, your floods, 

28 



An Exile's Return to the Adirondacks 29 

Your sounding aisles, lone paths and crystal air, 
Your moss-hung caves, your oracles of prayer ; 
Night, day; ice, fire; rain, hail; storm, calm; sun, 

snow: 
O, God be praised Who buildeth mountains so. 

1863. 



AT JOHN BROWN'S GRAVE 

AT rest until the heavens be no more 
Lies he of eagle eye and steel-gray hair ; 
Here fronts his lonely grave his cabin door, 
Who slavery bearded in its bloody lair. 

The Adirondacks watch ; the stars sing hymns 
Of praise above the lightning-riven spot ; 

A hero's high, clear soul in heaven swims, 
And the four continents forget him not ! 

A three-days' sullen storm the sun bursts through ; 

Cloud-Cleaver's glittering summit and the slope 
Of giant White Face, amber, gold, and blue, 

Receive a far-shot javelin beam of hope. 

Heaven's symbol of the hour and man it seems; 

A lance of fire across the sky's vast frown; 
Through gray, fierce gloom the searching, lone shaft 
gleams ; 

Awestruck I greet the omen, and bow down 



At John Brown's Grave 31 

And kiss the sod the martyr lies beneath ; 

My native mountains, sun and rain, the air, 
Stars, moon, and stream, lake, forest, rock, and heath, 

Join with me here in Freedom's passionate prayer: 

'* Of thee, John Brown, may God preserve the dust; 

Thy death the fettered Northern soul set free ; 
Thy sword's edge broke the slumbers of the just, 

And loosed the avalanche of liberty/' 

1862, North Elba. 



BREAKING THE MISSISSIPPFS YOKE 

PORT HUDSON ours. Strategic stroke: 
This breaks the Mississippi's yoke; 
Its giant flood again, 
In jubilee, in majesty, 
In affluence, in unity. 

Rolls free from snows to main. 

So through a dragon's mid-most mail. 
And yawning jaws, and swinging tail, 

Drives Freedom's thunderous spear; 
Its glittering edge sheds beams of hope. 
Far up the storm-clad mountain slope 

Of thousandth coming year. 

Shout, AUeghanies, to the sun ; 
Leap rivers that all courses run ; 

Flame, every hill-top brow ; 
Let East and West and plain and lake, 
Accordant acclamations make : 

Skies, bend your rainbows now. 
32 



Breaking the Mississippi's Yoke 33 

Look, weeping North, God*s storm is long, 
Its swirling pinions black and strong, 

Thy drops of blood the rain : 
But soil made fertile by that shower. 
Shall never see, to latest hour. 

Traitors or slaves again. 

Lo, on the Dial-plate of Time 

A Ray from out the throne sublime 

Falls through the tempest's rack; — 
The years will come, the years will go, 
The winds will wander to and fro. 

That Sunbeam turns not back. 

July i6, 1863. Civil War. 
3 



34 Overtones 



INGLESIDE 

THE flame purrs and sings, 
And the heart upward springs ; 
The multiform blaze 
Fills the soul with its rays ; 
The good angels meet 
In the light and the heat, 
And heaven opens wide 
At the blest fireside. 



TEN ARCHANGELS 

(Mts. St. Elias, Fairweather, Baker, Tacoma, Adams, 
Helen's, Hood, Jefferson, Pitt, Shasta.) 

TEN archangels watch the land, 
White with snow and gray with sand, 
On our mellow sunset coasts, 
Servants of the Lord of Hosts. 

In their robes are starry gems, 
On their foreheads diadems ; 
Far aloft their falchions flame. 
Taught of God what they proclaim. 

They the past have not forgot, 
They were here when man was not ; 
They foresee the coming years 
With the blisses and the tears. 

Look they must beyond the seas ; 
They love men of all degrees ; 
Crowns have they for every zone, 
But they crown the just alone. 
35 



36 Overtones 

They, beneath the moon and sun, 
God and men would make as one ; 
Heights have they at heaven's gate, 
Hallowed, vast, inviolate. 

Who ascends them orders hears ; 
At their summits God appears ; 
And His hosts encamp with Him 
On the whole horizon's rim. 

Puget Sound. 



OREGON CATHEDRALS 

FROM ashen lands 
Athirst for rains, 
From blistered sands 
Of sage-brush plains, 

From dusty breath 
Of wormwood waste. 

From zones of death 
I shuddering haste, 

And greet your glades, 

O goodly trees. 
Your lights and shades 

In sun and breeze. 

Multnomah hurls, 
From giddy heights, 

Its floods of pearls 

Through days and nights. 

37 



38 Overtones 

It sings and swings ; 

Enchants the moon ; 
Its vaporous wings 

Ascend the noon. 

The twilight gleams 
Make worship sweet ; 

Here mountain streams 
Flow past God's feet. 

Cathedral vast, 

These trees and stars : 

My soul hath clasped 
God's trellis bars. 

Written on railroad, approaching the Columbia 
River from Utah, April ii, 1894. 



Yosemite 39 



YOSEMITE 

HERE the glacier ground the stone, 
Here spake God, and it was done. 
Buttress, pinnacle, and wall, 
River, forest, waterfall. 
And God's right hand over all. 
Hear the mountain torrents call. 
Swung colossal from the steep. 
See them, wind-tossed, wave and sweep. 
Hear them sound, like harper's hands. 
On the quivering granite strands ; 
Now with thunderous thud and moan, 
Now with giant undertone. 
While the pine-trees whisper low, 
And the sunset shadows slow 
Up the vast, gnarled ridges go, 
To the roseate, far snow. 



GOLDEN GATE 

SHOT sea-laces shoreward slide, 
Backward down the shingles glide ; 
Overflow and undertow, 
So the surges come and go ; 
So gray Ocean rubs his hands. 
Palm to palm along the sands ; 
Rakes the pebbles up and down. 
Shakes the seas that navies drown. 

Ancient is the surges* moan, 

Once was heard of God alone ; 
Sun and moon ascend the east, 
So the tides have never ceased ; 

Sun and moon go down the west, 

So the surges never rest ; 

God keeps watch above the stars. 
Rules the wrinkled waves and bars. 

Bubble tossed in dim amaze, 
Little man in distant days 
40 



Golden Gate 41 

Giddy grew if far from land, 
Sea-surge sundered strand from strand. 

Man the sea now cleaves with fire, 

Undergirds with magic wire ; 
Bridges it with balanced keels, 
Round the world his whisper steals. 

Vast the sea and frail is man, 
Long its reign, his but a span ; 

But his thoughts knit shore to shore ; 

Sea at last shall be no more. 
Surf of suns and grains of sand 
All are one, within His hand 

Who created men and sea ; 

Alpha and Omega, He ! 

Golden Gate, San Francisco. 



42 Overtones 



SYDNEY HEADS 

THE Sydney Heads salute the sea, 
And winnowed ages yet to be ; 
Vast states beneath the Southern Cross, 
With matchless gain or wasting loss. 

O harbor of a thousand curves ! 
Blest is the State that heaven serves ; 
God's hands preside at both the poles, 
And He gives depth to seas and souls. 

The treacherous sands, the hidden reef, 
The siren shore of false belief, 
The howling storm, the whirlpool's throat, 
Harm none whom God's life currents float. 

Deep waters underneath thy keel. 

The public good, the common weal, 

O Ship of State, set thou thy sails 

For winds in which God's breath prevails! 

Sydney, Australia, August 27, 1895. 



JAPANESE COUPLETS 



43 



B 



MAY 



EES honey-ladened homeward go; 
The orchards blossom, white as snow. 



The little leaves unfold their hands 
And bless the Lord of seas and lands. 

The fishes leap, the thrushes sing; 
The southern winds the roses bring. 

The lark ascends to heaven's gate; 
The slow kine rest and ruminate. 

The chanting chimes of white cascades 
Sing day and night in mountain glades. 

The poor frogs peep the world around, 
And God is glad to hear the sound ; 

The lowliest life, the loftiest stars, 
Are matched orchestral music bars. 

45 



46 Overtones 

The prairies laugh beneath the sun, 
The furrowed fields to fruitage run. 

O blessed green of springing wheat, 
A vernal velvet, clean and sweet. 

The heavens remember hungry man 
And send him seeds and winnowing fan. 

The clouds drop showers with sudden ease ; 
The icebergs melt in softened seas. 



/ 

/ 



o 



/ JUNE 

SHADE and shine of groves divine, 
God's soul in each sequestered shrine; 



A sunlight dropped from God's own eyes 
Overflows the earth and air and skies! 

Balm, without languor, fills the breeze; 
A flawless foliage crowns the trees ; 

With sap from God now all things grow, 
In breath from God now all things flow ; 

The soul of birds is God's own soul. 
In God the zones of flowers unroll; 

He sparkles in the mountain springs, 
He lifts the lilting warbler's wings; 

From heaven to earth His angels pass, 
Their footsteps bend the billowing grass ; 

47 



48 Overtones 

He paints the rainbow and the rose, 
The moonlight from His eyelids flows; 

He whispereth in the tropic trees, 
His look makes glad the Arctic seas; 

New banners now His clouds unfurl. 
New thunderbolts his eagles hurl ; 

He rolls new Amazons afar, 
And trims the lamp of every star ! 

From suns and seas to youth and maid, 
Rich pulses now all life invade. 

What bliss unmeasured must be His 
Who giveth bliss to all that is, 

And setteth heaven and earth in tune, 
With music of His perfect June! 



JULY 

/ T3ARE tropic days fill Northern skies; 
f\ In rapid leaps the maize-fields rise. 

Far South the cane and cotton bloom ; 
Old giant growths for new give room. 

In furthest South ice-sheets unfold, 
And July wanders in the cold. 

The Northern grass has billows deep ; 
The kine in noon-tide shadow sleep. 

The thunders boom along the hills ; 
The skies with awe the lightning fills. 

The ringing scythes the meadows shear; 
The rising ricks the hay-fields cheer. 

The sultry sun creeps slowly south ; 
The rivers wane from source to mouth. 

4 

49 



50 Overtones 

Lush, continental breadths of fruit 
Fresh tables spread with service mute. 

The mellow moons the nights amaze ; 
The mountains sleep in silver haze. 

The bathers flock to ocean shore ; 
The sands are solitudes no more. 

By mountain lakes the loiterers camp ; 
The fire-fly lights her zig-zag lamp. 

The whippoorwills both twilights thrill ; 
New red-cheeked globes the orchards fill. 

The yellow harvest is begun, 
And God is Sun behind the sun. 



' AUGUST 



FIERCE heat perfects the Northern grains; 
And languor in the noon-tide reigns. 



/ A rustling harvest, yellow sheaves, 
' The hunger of a world relieves. 



The August crickets all night long 
Salute the stars with strident song. 

Their note is ancient, sharp, and shrill ; 
A rival of the whippoorwill. 

The golden rods their sceptres wave, 
With stately salutations grave. 

And symbols give from sea to sea 
Of clustered States in unity. 

The thunders follow fervid hours ; 
The fleecy clouds drop sudden showers. 

51 



52 Overtones 

The parching heat invades the blood ; 
The loiterers haunt the shade and flood. 

The coon's long, quavering, human cry 
Shows where the plundered maize-fields lie. 

The moon and sun with keen amaze 
Behold the slowly shortening days. 

The mellow winds bring autumn near, 
And ripeness rules the rolling year. 

Last sun of August, shall I see 
No more a summer sky and thee? 

Cliff Seat, August, 1900. At sunset. 



( SEPTEMBER 



T 



HE subtle amber days have come, 
The moons now march with mellow drum. 



The harvest evening orb benign 
Entrances earth in shade and shine. 

The cricket sings with piercing thrills ; 
Rare grow the plaintive whippoorwills. 

The river fogs their ghostly veil 
Spread and withdraw along the dale. 

Autumnal colors with amaze 
Fill human eyes and angels* gaze. 

The White Frost hath a pencil bright, 
Bronze, yellow, scarlet his delight. 

The woodland paths in solitude 
Match now the high cathedral mood. 
53 



54 Overtones 

The migrant birds convene their hosts, 
A shrill, keen joy the blue-jay boasts. 

Last walk with guests on rustling leaves, 
The blessed rustic life bereaves. 

The purple asters wave farewell, 
Returning tides the cities swell. 

The holy early twilights fall ; 
The evening fireside crackles call. 

With storm and stress on waves and rocks. 
Descends the giant Equinox. 

Now far aloft his bugles blow ; 
Across the Line the sun's wheels go. 



/ OCTOBER 

SOFT rolls the sky's cerulean wheel, 
And threads of peace the Parcae reel. 

October amber fills the sky ; 

In russet robes the landscapes lie. 

The yellow maize sleeps in the sun, 
And next year's harvest is begun. 

Each sunbeam sings a silver strain, 
Each mellow leaf -tint soothes the brain. 

Toil pauseth now, and so does pain 
God's benediction falls like rain. 

I And yet beneath the azure cope, 

I The sweetest things are Love and Hope; 

Love that no frost of death can pale 
And Hope that lives beyond the veil. 



55 



( NOVEMBER 

GRAY, dripping mists enswathe the hills, 
Chill rains make resonant the rills. 

Beneath the pines in darkling glades, 
In choral notes sing white cascades. 

Loud brooks with swollen amber flow, 
And smoother all their pebbles grow. 

The misty hills behind the rain, 
Shed inspiration sweet and sane. 

Go, little birds, the Southern heat 
Calls hence from far your pinions fleet. 

The river curves among the hills. 
But all its curves one current fills. 

God's plans through varied ages run ; 
In all their windings they are one. 

In autumn's chills and winter's harms, 
Beneath are everlasting arms. 

O good gray gloom, O frozen sod. 
Great peace have ye in trusting God ! 



56 



VERSES 



57 



ORPHEUS AND THE SIRENS 

WHEN Ulysses, on the sea, 
Hears the Sirens' luring songs, 
Ship's crew's ears with wax fills he. 

Binds himself with knotted thongs : 
Foils he thus the Sirens' guile, 
Passes safe th' enchanted isle. 

But when Orpheus on the sea 

Hears the Sirens' sorcerous songs, 

To his Argonauts sings he. 
Richer ravishment prolongs ; 

Sweeter his than Sirens' strains ; 

He th' enchanted shore disdains. 

Trust, or holy love, is light ; 

Flesh, mere cloud-wrack of the west, 
Which alone hath colors bright 

When in day's pure glory dressed ; 
Gate of heaven, if drenched with day. 
Only fog, the light away. 
59 



6o Overtones 

** Only fog/' sings Orpheus loud; 

*' All the bliss is in the light; 
Love the radiance, not the cloud ; 

Foul mere mists, and vacant night. 
Only fog the Sirens sell ; 
Sunbeams none in Sirens dwell." 



GEM A-WING 

THE HUMMING BIRD 

LIKE a shooting star 
Flashing near and far- 
Yet she cannot sing, 
Sapphire Gem a-wing. 

Poised in air she sips 
Nectar blossom tips — 
Yet she cannot sing, 
Dainty Gem a-wing. 

Liquid neck of blue, 
Shot with amber through — 
Yet she cannot sing, 
Timid Gem a-wing. 

Body green and gold. 
Iris manifold — 
Yet she cannot sing. 
Sparkling Gem a-wing. 
6i 



62 Overtones 

Eyes alert with flame, 
Spirit who can tame? 
Yet she cannot sing, 
Darting Gem a-wing. 

Tiny nest of moss, 
Downy, silken floss — 
Yet she cannot sing 
Brooding Gem a-wing. 

Viewless wings give sound, 
Mystic tones surround — 
Only so can sing — 
Humming Gem a-wing. 

Great of brain and heart, 
Angels* joy thou art — 
Thou to them dost sing, 
Holy Gem a-wing. 



FOREST ERMINE 

ERMINE in the forest aisles 
Earth and heaven reconciles ; 
In the solemn, dazzling dells, 
Sound, far off, celestial bells. 

Where the winds, with whispers low, 
Sing in cedars white with snow, 
Seraphs with unsullied feet 
Bring to men surprises sweet. 

In the winter's keen ozone, 
Through the forests walk alone ; 
By the cloudless, orbic moon, 
Best in high, effulgent noon. 

Where no evil hath been done, 
And, if thou hast wisdom won. 
Thou shalt meet with angels there ; 
Earth sees none more tall and fair. 

Not the banyan, not the palm, 
Offereth man the subtlest balm ; 
63 



64 Overtones 

But the pine-tree under snow, 
Ermine, emerald, matched, aglow. 

High and vast the holy halls; 
Voice, not human, through them calls ; 
Hear who listen there alone. 
Tonic tones from Heaven's throne. 

Overarched, cathedral boughs. 
Singing, soothe unquiet brows ; 
In His forests, green and white, 
God hath dwelling and delight. 



A Snow Song 65 



A SNOW SONG 

THRICE blessed be our days; 
Snow feeds the fireside blaze, 
And draws within its rays 
The ordered household ways, 
And languid license slays, 
Makes bold the freemen's gaze. 
Gives stalwart States their praise ; 

White zones are free ; 

Home, liberty. 

Are plants that grow 

Only in snow. 



66 Overtones 



CHANTICLEER 

CHANTICLEER, chanticleer, 
Who tells thee that dawn is near? 
Yet the night is chill and black, 
But thou say*st the sun comes back. 

I believe thee, 

I receive thee. 
As a prophet of the Lord, 
And I rise up at thy word. 
His be all my day begun. 
He my Sun behind the sun. 

Cliff Seat, Oct. i, 1894. Before daylight. 



SONG OF THE OLD SILURIAN SHORE 

EARLIEST ripple of life was my own, 
Born of the breath of Heaven alone ; 
Centuries old new centuries meet, 
Forty times forty are under thy feet ; 
Forty times forty are over thy head. 
Ages on ages by Providence led : 

Whither away? and now whither away? 
Out of the darkness and into the day. 

Earliest mountains I saw as they rose ; 
Earliest greenness of all that yet grows. 
Daintiest mosses and stateliest trees. 
Continents founded in stormiest seas; 
Earth set in order but lonely as yet, 
Globe rolling softly, as suns rose and set : 

Whither away? and now whither away? 

Out of the darkness and into the day. 

Earliest birds in the first sapphire skies, 
Earliest flitting of all that yet flies : 
67 



68 Overtones 

Earliest beasts in the echoing groves, 
Earliest ranging of all that yet roves, 
Earliest monsters that lashed the salt seas 
Life still ascending in sunlight and breeze : 

Whither away? and now whither away? 

Out of the darkness and into the day. 

Next I saw man in his earliest hour, 

Late comer he, but with girding of power : 

Hushed grew the world for his Maker now spoke; 

Deep in man*s conscience divinity woke: 

Man the voice follows, though often he falls ; 

Onward the voice leads, and upward it calls : 

Whither away? and now whither away? 

Out of the darkness and into the day. 

Holiest, holiest, holiest hour, 
Christ as man's climax, in Deity's power, 
Saw I, appear — and suffer. Ascend, 
Sound of my surges, world without end, 
Praise the one purpose which heightening runs 
Onward through men as in atoms and suns ; 

Whither away? and now whither away? 

Out of the darkness and into the day. 

Suggested by a Silurian ripple stone at Cliff Seat. 



A Memory of the Forest 69 



A MEMORY OF THE FOREST 

SANG to the oak and birch and elm, the pine : 
Rippled the glad brooks living, liquid tones ; 

Bathed their smooth breasts the mossy, gurgling 
stones ; 
Warbled the birds from dewy shrub and vine ; 
Pierced the fresh glades aromas keen and fine ; 

Outshone the violet's blue the azure zones; 

Dropped in the dark, deep woods balsamic cones ; 
Fell God's eye there alone on thine and mine: 
Throbbed the white morn's engulfing, crystal seas; 

Floated the stream spring's fallen blossom snow ; 
Flew home with honey rich the purple bees ; 

Kissed the brook's lips the willows bending low; 
Swept the loud, tall, tree harps the sweet southwest ; 
Thrilled the awed forest, murmuring vast and blest. 



LION AND EAGLE 
Leo, loquitur: 

EGO terrarum Pontifex ! 
My lands and seas the globe enclose : 
All I adjoin I would annex; 
My Empire through the ages flows, 
Its neighbors wane. // grows, // grows. 
One tongue, one throne gives earth repose. 
I burst the gates which trade perplex ; 
I cut the cords that commerce vex. 
By magic of the open door, 
The world, mine oyster, I explore. 
At my fierce roar and swinging tail 
The brightest tropic stars grow pale. 

Aquila, loquitur: 

Hush, Leo! Thou hast many foes; 
The love of fairness world-wide grows, 
Boast more of light and less of might, 
Confederate, they the globe enclose. 
Who stand for law and holy right 
70 



Lion and Eagle 71 

And arbitration's banners white. 
The Golden Rule is market law 
Of which the shrewdest stand in awe ; 
The Golden Rule has market worth, 
Men of good will have peace on earth. 
Predacious swagger thou must drop, 
Vast shaggy mane and hirsute crop. 

Leo, loquitur: 

Cease, Aquila. Thou art but young: 

Thy greatest gifts are eye and tongue. 

Thy land is large ; thy people small, 

As yet thou hast enough for all ; 

But when the rich thy poor devour, 

Lo, then will come thy bitter hour. 

Once, thou hadst freedom ; with it, slaves ; 

Yet honor, thou, thy martyrs' graves. 

Thy wings that skirt the sun, behold, 

Are flecked with flagrant love of gold. 

Thy talons hurl Heaven's thunderbolts — 

But only when it rules thy votes. 

Thou art not changeless. Who knows when 

May blaze disunion's fires again? 

Grant that thou lovest light and right, 

Fierce faction chiefly loveth might. 

Thou art not ripe yet. Who can tell 

If thou in time will ripen well? 

Opposing force must not escape 

My roads (Rhodes) from Cairo to the Cape. 



72 Overtones 

Aquila, loquitur: 

\ From East to West, from palm to pine, i 
The earth is God's — not thine or mine; 
His purpose conquers. With Him I 
All men would lift toward His sky. 
All men with tintings myriad 
Are men — white, black and brown and red ; 
One holy right is manifest, 
Each soul's full right to do its best ; 
Beware who fetters natural growth, 
To slay such Heaven is never loath : 
Firm law and freedom earth adorn, 
Tho' freedom yet hath many a thorn. 
Let Naboth's vineyard not have name, 
As ancient symbol of thy fame. 
Thou tak'st thy path and I my own, 
And each will reap what he hath sown. 

Cliff Seat, May 26, igoi. 



TRANSIT 

THE world I own a little time: 
All ages past 
Are mine, are one in bonds sublime, 

Both first and last : 
All men are one, or near or far. 
As sky is one from star to star. 

The young lamb thinks the world is new ; 

But long before 
His precious day the skies were blue 

In seasons four; 
And lucent brooks had silver sheen, 
And rainbows hung the hills between. 

The young child thinks the world is young; 

Time far gone by 
The sun and moon in heaven swung; 

Eternity 
Behind him lies. And so God's plan 
Has ripened to the birth of man. 
73 



74 Overtones 

The world is mine a little space, 

For others then ; 
But all who come to take my place 

Are brother men. 
A man am I : all men with me 
Haste into vast Eternity. 



YOUTH AND AGE 

THE young spring brook, with icy edge 
Tinkling, clear and cool, 
Leaps adown a mossy ledge 
Into an ice-bound pool : 
The spring has hope 
With ice to cope ; 
For God on high, 
The mellow sky. 
And vernal star, 
Ice-gates unbar. 

Autumnal brook, with icy edge, 

Tinkling, clear and cool, 
Leaps adown a mossy ledge 
Into an ice-bound pool : 
It has no hope, 
With ice to cope ; 
For God on high. 
The shivering sky, 
And winter's star. 
The ice-gates bar. 



75 



THE SOUL^S THIRST 

AT the hiirs top a spring, 
At the hilFs foot a school; 
Bright waters in both, 
Glad, crystalline, cool. 

Deep drank I of one, 

Of the other a sip ; 
Not body, but soul 

Has the thirstier lip. 

Where now is the spring? 

Its waters yet flow. 
Where now is the school? 

Dismissed long ago. 

Here the wood-thrushes sing 
To the rain-rippled pool ; 

All lands and all seas 

Have been mine as a school. 

But the soul thirsteth yet, 

Till Eternity's sea. 
With fathomless waves 

Shall satisfy me. 



76 



TUMBLING AMBER— AN OMEN 

TUMBLING amber, where art thou, 
Once so full of noise? 
Heaven its rain withholds, and now 
Vanished are thy joys. 

Pride thou hadst in liquid pearls, 

Gems in cascades white, 
Currents crystal, glittering swirls, 

Singing day and night. 

Thou didst trust the far, green height 

Thee to fill with rain. 
Where the eagles take their flight — 

But thy trust was vain. 

Source of brooks is not in hills ; 

Source of brooks, the sky ; 
And there only when He wills 

Who has power on high. 
77 



78 Overtones 

Lo ! the winter brings the snow, 

And the spring the sun ; 
Summer showers walk to and fro ; 

Autumn russets run 

Rustling on thy pebbles white, 

Tuneless now and dry, 
Yet lose not alertness quite — 

God thy faith would try. 

Far overhead the clouds are spread. 

Winds have whispers low ; 
The drought is dead — thy springs are fed ; 

Thy Maker bids thee flow. 

Let eagles sunward take their flights, 
Space boast of star-dust sown ; 

Dependent are the haughtiest heights 
And thou — on God alone. 



THE BIRD OF BOTH TWILIGHTS 



BIRD of vespers, bird of dawn, 
Out of human sight withdrawn, 
Half in bliss, half woe-begone, 

Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, 
Loud thy liquid wood-notes fill. 
Both the holy twilights still. 

As they filled them long ago. 
When the brooks began to flow 
And the world had not a woe. 

II 

Earliest and latest one, 
When the garish day is done. 
And before the rising sun. 

Let thy tranceful, tearful tune, 
Charm the listening stars and moon, 
Fill the secret dells of June. 

79 



8o Overtones 

Myriad forests, lakes, and streams, 
Golden gloamings, latest gleams, 
Silver dawn's divinest beams. 

Ill 

In the city's grimy haze. 
In the roar of dusty ways. 
In the burdened, heavy days, 

I, in thought, will hear thee then, 
Near to me but far from men, 
I will make my street a glen. 

Carpeted with shade and shine 
Of the moonbeams' light divine 
Resonant with songs of thine. 

IV 

Thee our fathers heard around 
Pilgrim camps on virgin ground. 
With the ocean's mingled sound. 

Sea to sea, the pioneer 
Hauntest thou with subtle cheer, 
Minstrel of the hushed frontier. 

Dewy dusk on hill and plain, 
Soul of silence thy refrain. 
Healing falls from thee like rain. 



The Bird of Both Twilights 8i 

V 

Bird of lonely mystery, 
Palpitant with ecstasy. 
Omen of eternity, 

Voice of hope but plaintive still. 
Call on men for wit and will ; 
All our human twilights thrill. 

Ages yet shall mark thy ways, 
And with thee, in wiser days. 
Offer in both twilights praise. 



SONNETS 



83 



NIAGARA 



WHEN Rome fell, where wert thou, colossal Fall? 
In slow recession thou hast wandered back; 
These leagues of seething chasm were thy track. 

When lost Atlantis sank, where didst thou call 

To thy vexed precipices? What if all 

Thy dates were written, from the fiery sack 
Of Troy up to the Deluge green and black? 

How eloquent were then thy storied wall! 

When first in thee were dipped the lightning's wings? 

What thought hast thou of Saturn and his rings? 

What wert thou in thy youth when man was not? 

When thou and he first met hast thou forgot? 

Speak, dateless roar, for thou art old and wise ; 

Thy memories are unsounded majesties. 

II 

I hear the thunderous thud, the muffled roar, 
I see the blinding, wheeling, smiting mists, 

85 



86 Overtones 

The greens, the grays, purples and amethysts ; 

From Heaven's wide palm thy frightened cataracts 
pour, 

And I look up beneath them and adore. 

Above me hang chain lightnings on the wrists 
Of summer tempests. In the awesome lists 

Of contests are the thunders and thy shore. 

Beneath thy quivering, riven cliffs, I lie 

And gaze into the lightning and the sky, 

But I hear only thee and touch and see 

A hand which undergirds immensity. 

Thou speakest much, but speakest most of Him ; 

God, God, God walks on thy watery rim. 



Sunset 87 



SUNSET 

VAST flings abroad his arms the setting sun ; 
He resteth not from labors hotly pressed; 
He seems, but only seems, to sink to rest; 
His feet across all continents have run, 
He mercy*s errands in all lands has done; 
A circuit ended, he renews his quest, 
And pauses never in his service blest. 
The twilight here, the morning there begun : 
Earth girdles he with cestus of bright fire ; 

Each flower she wears he makes his special care ; 
He decketh her with rainbows, round and round ; 
Her wings keep time with his and never tire ; 
His bride in clasp of right arm bold and bare, 
He flieth through the Infinite, without sound. 



THE SKY 



HE who hath looked with insight on the sky, 
And once asked, Whither look I ? on and on, 

How far hath Light, outdarting, ever shone? 
Or whence the ray that me now passes by? 
How far from hence do its white sources lie? 

How far beyond the dawn to furthest dawn? 

In upward flight, how far hath seraph gone? 
Hath questions asked that can gain no reply 
From man or angel. Infinite the space, 
Encurtaining man*s heedless, little race: 
Sublimer far than all the stars it holds. 
No end and no beginning it unfolds ; 
Unbounded, self-existent, changeless, One, 
His vesture Who is brighter than the sun. 



II 



In God*s space are all souls that ever were. 

Both good and evil. There the Judgment Day 

88 



The Sky 89 

Will dawn. There heaven and earth will flee away 
Before the Great White Throne. The awesome stir 
Of worlds made now in fires that wheel and whir, 
As skies together roll, is there. The ray 
Of hope from which the righteous never stray, 
Shall there for them no tremor have, nor blur. 
There beckon ransomed hosts to seats above 
All souls who love what God and angels love. 
O loyal cohorts crowned in e;ndless space, 
O Seraph choirs who see your Sovereign's face, 
Enswathe us in our present low estate 
And lead our lawless lives to Heaven's gate ! 



WASHINGTON, AFTER A CENTURY 

IDEAL son of liberty and law 
And Father of safe freedom ! Still he prays 

At Valley Forge. He walks the blood-stained ways 
The unformed nation as an infant saw. 
Ripe senates from his insight wisdom draw ; 

New times exalt and clarify his praise. 

A hundred years he bears remorseless gaze 
Of history, which finds in him no flaw. 
His forehead broad has radiance from the light 

Which falls upon it from the Great White Throne : 

His wisdom was his Maker's, not his own : 
From God his sword and balanced word had might ; 

Our measure of a man whom nothing mars, 

Nor less than angel now among the stars. 

As his wide wings ascend the solemn sky, 

His hand yet sows the earth with precious seed, 
And signals guidance as the nations need. 
He joins the immortal starry choir on high 
Which teacheth measure to man's liberty. 
The foresight of the seraphs in his creed, 

90 



Washington, after a Century 91 

A service of the cherubim his deed. 
And Freedom^s martyred souls in majesty- 
Stand with him in the constellations vast, 
And ask how long man*s lawlessness will last. 
He sees yet famished earth beneath him roll 
And knows what cosmic rain and ray and soul 
Can give it harvests and its hosts unite 
With bliss like his in loyalty and light. 



92 Overtones 



ST. JAMES'S PARK 

CHARLES FIRST walked here to meet the heads- 
man's axe; 

Out of his path spring forth these blood-red flowers ; 

Here met his kingly power yet kinglier powers; 
A patriot army scorned his whips and racks. 
Here Milton on the hours laid holy tax, 

His windows, not his eyes, looked on these bowers ; 

His starry lamp watched hoar Westminster's towers 
And lit the world from yon brown house which lacks 
Not yet his name. These children on the sward 
At play among the leaves reap his reward. 
Let life be cheerful here as the broad day : 

For here new majesties of law had birth; 

A thunderbolt here voiced the people's worth : 
Cromwell and Vane are ghosts not far away. 



St. Gaudens's Puritan 93 



ST. GAUDENS^S PURITAN 

ASTRIDE he makes in God*s name forward far: 
The Holy Word he carries on his heart ; 

Revealed truth and he may never part. 
And on his forehead is Faith *s holy star: 
Its rays of prayer and purpose brook no bar 

In this New World, and in the Old they dart 

Dismay to tyrants, as they cut apart 
A monarches neck and head. The glittering car 
Of triumph he now gives to sacred things ; 
He kneels to God but not to lawless kings, 
This exiled pioneer of better days 

In home and school and trade and Church and 
State ; 
His watchwords the dim nations yet amaze, 

And plaudits in the wisest ages wait. 

St. Gaudens's bronze statue of the Puritan, Springfield, Mass. 



94 Overtones 



WERE VISION OPEN 

THIS world were spoiled if Heaven burst on us now. 
A longing to depart and be at home 
Would make us weary of the sapphire dome, 
Were vision open. Seraphic hosts that bow 
Before the Great White Throne learn safely how 
The galaxies of souls that ether roam 
And galaxies of suns that toss their foam 
Up to the Heaven of heavens, with bliss endow 
Eternity. So spoiled were man to see 
All depths in which lost souls sink endlessly. 
Our virtue would be selfish, if we quailed 
Before perdition were it full unveiled : 
Best for us to see, darkly and afar, 
Heaven^s gates, or Hell's only as yet ajar. 



The Completion of Apollo 95 



THE COMPLETION OF APOLLO 

I SEE Olympus from Parnassus Height, 
The throne of Jove, Apollo*s holy shrine, 
And Delphi, with its mysteries divine ; 
The Muses nine sing round me in the night, 
And ghosts of Marathon amaze the sight ; 
The hundred starry souls of Athens shine 
On high, and all their cold, keen light is mine : 
But overhead the Cross, vast outline bright. 
Dazzles these ghosts, and all the stars and lands ; 
In prayer beneath it I lift up my hands 
With thanks for light completed, truth and grace, 
A revelation of God*s heart and face 
Entranced before which now Apollo falls. 
And every bell of coming sunrise calls. 

At night on Mt. Parnassus. 



/ 



IN PRAISE OF TRUST 



I KNOW that thou art true and strong and pure ; 
My forehead on thy palm I fall asleep ; ) 

My sentinels with thee no vigils keep, 
Though elsewhere never without watch secure. 
How restful is thy palm. I life endure, 

These stranger souls whose veils I shyly sweep ; 

These doubts what secrets hide within the deep. 
Because aglow within the vast obscure. 
Thy hand is whitest light. My Peace art thou ; 

My firm, green isle within a troubled sea ; 
And lying here, and looking upward now, 

I ask, if thou art this, what God must be ; 
If thus I rest within thy goodness, how 

In goodness of the Infinite degree ! 



II 



That subtle hour beside the crystal lake. 
My spirit through thy spirit looked aloft, 
96 



In Praise of Trust 97 

And trust in thee threw open, blue and soft, 
A sky above my former sky to make 
A window in the deep, and new light break. 
As if a bluer blue the old blue doffed, 
And softer softness the old softness scoffed ; 
I felt on all my hills a new spring wake. 
None in the wide, sly world, trust I as thee ; 
But thee I trust and trust most utterly 
And at the window of this trust my soul. 
Weary and sad and lame, grows glad and whole; 
And streaming through that window's dewy bar, 
Shines God, a sun, no more a far, faint star. 



Ill 



I trust thee, trust thee, trust thee, and my trust 
Hath bliss that never the pure heavens allot 
To that cheap love which perfect trust hath not. 

Our spirits interfused, themselves, adjust 

As sunbeams into sunbeams wholly thrust, 

Lucent to lucent searching every spot. 

White ecstasy to every fibre shot ; 

Refreshment, sweetness, strength, elation just; 

Each endless lance of light lance endless fills ; 

Each endless lance of heat lance endless thrills. 

Trustless, if flecked, love hath no endless lance ; 

Empty all love with unrest in its glance ; 

Narrow all love that builds no boundless sky. 

And hath no kinship to infinity. 



98 Overtones 

IV 

In this white soul of thine if it filled all 

God fiUeth now, could nothing wrong abide ; 
These clear, glad eyes could no pollution hide ; 
But, from their balanced heaven, would thunders call. 
And from their pure, swift beams would lightnings fall 
To smite wrong ere the wrong be multiplied, 
And burn the thorn before it pierced the side, 
And crime in every rolling globe appall. 
And yet these perfect eyes in which mine sleep, 
Would not be sweet did they not lightnings keep : 
In softest skies the hottest fire-bolts dwell : 
Thine eyes mix dew and fire and both are well. 
If thus I trust this soul, O God, how Thee; 
Both Love's and Lightning's full Infinity. 



This crystal soul of thine were it outspread 
Until the drop should fill the universe. 
How in it might the angels' wings immerse 

And wake and sleep the living and the dead ; 

Where sad eyes bathe ; rests Doubt its tossing head ; 
Swim the vast worlds; dissolve Guilt's icy curse; 
And sightless, if but loyal, each disperse 

Fear by full trust, and by devotion dread. 

I sleep in Thee, my God, as in this soul. 

Trust Thee as I trust this which Thou hast made ; 



In Praise of Trust 99 

Let sight to Thee be tranceful trust persuade ; 
In loyal trust from sin and guilt grow whole; 
If loving what Thou lov'st, in Christ lose fear, 
When I before Thy Great White Throne appear. 

VI 

On thee I lean in utter Trust, and touch. 

With the souFs radiance far inshot, 

A something that is in but of thee not. 
And over this strange sense I wonder much ; 
The crystal in thee hath a posture such, 

The sunlight hath in it a Sun begot ; 

A Sun that is in thee but of thee not. 
In climbing heavenward now I need no crutch ; 
Wings have I when with thine my pulses beat, 
I breathe, alert thy crystallineness sweet. 
Thy genuineness lofty and elate. 
And seem to breathe the God in them inmate. 
My soul ascends. I breathe Thy Inmost Soul : 
In breathing Thee I breathe Thy Aureole. 

VII 

/ In Lovers high trust I feel that all the stars 
Fight forme in their courses. ' I rejoice, 
And with the morning stars lift up my voice 
And sing. Through all their ruddy lighted bars. 
Morning and evening bless me. Nothing mars 
This ecstasy of holy, restful choice : 

Lcrc. 



loo Overtones 

Rejoicing we rejoice and more rejoice. 
Nor beareth our deep trust a trace of scars : 
Unwounded it hath met the fiercest test 

Of storm and sun and subtly severing years, 
In joy and pain, in poorest and in best, 

In presence and in absence, smiles and tears : 
And yet it grows: and, be it God's behest, 

It yet shall grow and more absorb our fears. 



A Reminiscence loi 



A REMINISCENCE 

I KISSED her here and all the grove is sweet; 
Our love has proved itself a thornless rose ; 
Our lips met long transfused, and with the throes 

Of passion crystalline, intense and meet 

To give the angels joy who at the feet 
Of God, wreathed soul in soul, as glows 
Of morning wreathed in glows of morn, repose. 

Or in translucent ether flame and beat. 

Yonder we sat a holy hour entranced. 

And now the hour, through the full years advanced, 

Burns with the leaves, sings with the birds, and 
lanced 

Though air and sky and clouds and sun and dew. 

As floods the morn these rustling arches through, 

Entrances and transfigures as if new. 



I02 Overtones 



AT FLORENCE 

ON A THIRTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY 

1AM with God alone, as turns my glass 
Its sands half run. An hour I sit at feet 
Of Angelo and Dante. It is meet 

Their hands should be in mine as thus I pass 

From brook to river. Now my Arno's mass 

Escapes its Apennines. Heaven knows how sweet 
Above there were both rain and flinty sleet. 

God's sunlight by the ice makes green the grass. 

In this fat plain those far peaks are my force ; 

Their rains float fleets at my new, toiling strands ; 

The glaciers and the sunbeams give me course; 

The light and I can never have divorce ; 

From clouds to springs, from springs to ocean sands, 
I flow from God to God into His hands. 

Church of Santa Croce, January 26th. 



Montmorenci 103 



MONTMORENCI 

OLOUD and loitering veil of amber snow! 
Come hither, Fays, and from the silver mists 
Cut kirtles for yourselves, and for your wrists 
Snatch bracelets from the palpitating bow ; 
And in the chanting air flit to and fro ; 

Among the greens, and grays, and amethysts 
Find starry crowns, and then into the lists 
In contest for the prize of beauty go : 
And with the large, low moon sing to the pines. 
And with the starlight shoot the spangled lines. 
Through winter's pomp and all the seasons four 
Walk on the brink from which the cataracts pour : 
The King of Fays hath clothed the black cliffs so : 
Sing to the sun, the storm — fire, hail, and snow. 



I04 Overtones 



SEA BATHING 

SUBLIMITIES enswathe us. Billows hoar 
Plunge over us their seething cataracts' might, 

As up we swim their crystal bosoms bright 
And clasp their necklace gems. In surge we soar. 
Thunders the league-long breaker on the shore ; 

Lifts slow another its green dizzy height ; 

Swells, flashes, threatens, topples, breaks in white; 
And yet come others on with roar and roar. 
Grave anthems sounding in our quivering souls; 
An organ tone of God within us rolls ; 
In His infinities we rise, or sink. 
His majesties engulf us. Him we drink. 
All lands the ocean laveth, love we, too ; 
All shores with her salute, caress, and woo. 

At Newport. 



The Iroquois 105 



THE IROQUOIS 

LORDS of the tomahawk and twanging bow, 
Six Nations regal, kindred and allied, 
Chieftains in stately forests, prairies wide, 
From Hudson's hills to Mississippi's flow, 
Who taught you federated valor so 

That every warrior had a sovereign's stride, 
Yet every matron voted at his side 
At the great council fire? A full-voiced '* No '* 
Your mothers had to quench or fan your strife. 
And holy was to you the matron's life. 
Warriors whom no one without terror saw, 
Maize-fields ye had, and villages and law ; 
Souls eloquent as lightning in the night. 
Not children but the brethren of the white. 



io6 Overtones 



SLAUGHTERED SAINTS AS SOVEREIGNS 

IN MEMORY OF ARMENIAN AND CHINESE MARTYRS 

THE men they make are tests of all the creeds; 
The martyrs' blood is reddened by the breath 
Of Faith for which they gladly suffer death. 
The creeds are mothers and the daughters deeds. 
These ruddy drops, O Lord, make Thou the seeds 
Of new heroic growths. The Scripture saith — 
And blessed is the ear that listeneth — 
That Cross to Crown, from blackest torture, leads. 
The hosts of faithful souls are fixed as stars 
Above our dim and troubled human state. 
They guide us and they judge us. Nothing mars 

Their light. And we must meet them soon or late. 
Sword, scaffold, famine, fagot, prison bars 

Are sweet to him whom Heaven's approvals wait. 



A Natural Supernatural 107 



A NATURAL SUPERNATURAL 

AS in, not of, the crystal morning dews. 
The glad, keen sparkles of the sunlight shine, 

So in, not of men, flames somewhat divine. 
The javelin beams of God's high morn transfuse 
The conscience. They who that light use. 

In them a dewy sparkle has its shrine, 

A natural supernatural. It is mine. 
I fear before that sparkle. Oh, my Muse, 
He is in me. Let Him possess me quite. 

Let all my drop drink God. Reflected ray. 
Shall not my light have something of His light, 

And His, as echo, be some word I say? 
In every dew-drop is a little star. 
In every soul is light that comes from far. 



io8 Overtones 



A FAR SHORE 

ON a far shore my land swam out of sight, 
But I could see familiar, native stars ; 

My home was shut from me by ocean bars. 
Yet home hung there above me in the night ; 
Unchanged fell down on me Orion's light; 

As always Venus rose and fiery Mars ; 

My own the Pleiads yet, and without jars 
In wonted tones sang all the heavenly height. 
So when in death from underneath my feet 

Rolls the round world, I then shall see the sky 

Of God's truths burning yet familiarly; 
My native constellations I shall greet; 

I lose the outer, not the inner eye ; 

The landscape, not the souFs Stars when I die. 



BOSTON HYMNS 



109 



IGDRASIL 



TREE AND LEAF 



ONWARD storms my strong-limbed race, 
Pause for me is nigh ; 
Long on earth will men have place, 
Not much longer I. 

Thousand summers kiss the lea, 

Only one the sheaf ; 
Thousand springs may deck the tree, 

Only one the leaf. 

Gone already earlier leaves ; 

Lonely on my bough 
Cling I whom the wind bereaves, 

Rustling russet now. 

On Timers leafy carpet I 

Fall in God's great lap; 
Once we live and when we die 

Feed the Future's sap. 
Ill 



112 Overtones 

Seed whose sap God's light allures 

Riseth from the sod ; 
In a tropic heaven matures 

Whoso loveth God. 

Grow, great Igdrasil! Thy roots 
Drink God's glittering dew; 

In thy sunniest topmost shoots, 
We our life renew. 



THE TOUCH OF THE UNSEEN 

AS feel the flowers the sun in heaven, 
But sun and sunlight never see; 
So feel I Thee, O God, my God, 
Thy dateless noontide hid from me. 

As touch the buds the blessed rain. 
But rain and rainbow never see ; 

So touch I Thee in bliss or pain. 

Thy far vast rainbow veiled from me. 

Orion, moon and sun and bow. 

Amaze a sky unseen by me ; 
God's wheeling Heaven is there, I know, 

Although its arch I may not see. 

In low estate, I, as the flower, 

Have nerves to feel,« not eyes to see; 

The subtlest in the conscience is 

Thyself and that which toucheth Thee. 
113 



114 Overtones 

Forever it may be that I 

More yet shall feel, and shall not see; 
Above all souls Thy wholeness rolls 

Not visibly, but tangibly. 

But flaming heart to rain and ray 
Turn I in meekest loyalty ; 

I breathe and move and live in Thee, 
And drink the ray I cannot see. 



GOD^S BLISS 

A HYMN FOR FOUR SEASONS 

GOD now girds with flowers the zone, 
Clasps His right arm round His own 
Planet's breast, and claspeth all 
Suns and planets, great and small : 
Bliss hath He who bliss doth give 
In all worlds to all that live. 

God now moves in summer heat, 
Fills with growth His rolling, fleet 
Planet's breast, and fiUeth all 
Suns and planets, great and small: 
Bliss hath He who bliss doth give 
In all worlds to all that live. 

God now ripens autumn corn, 
Swathes in gold His else forlorn 
Planet's breast, and blesseth all 
Suns and planets, great and small: 
Bliss hath He who bliss doth give 
In all worlds to all that live. 
115 



ii6 Overtones 

God now whiteneth earth with snow, 
Cleanseth with His rains His low 
Planet's breast, and cleanseth all 
Suns and planets, great and small : 
Bliss hath He who bliss doth give 
In all worlds to all that live. 



THE CREED OF CERTAINTIES 

" Before the Throne there was a sea of glass like 
unto crystal." — Rev. iv., 6. 

ON the glassy sea of green, 
Flooded with God's noontide keen, 
Can there be for sin a screen? 
Omnipresence none can flee : 
Flight from God to God must be. 

Evermore with God must I 
Dwell in strife or harmony ; 
Evermore my changeless past 
Gaze on me from out the vast ; 
Thou art first, and Thou art last. 

Oh ! if now before Thy face, 
In Thy brightness I had place, 
With the past unscreened from me. 
Thou from whom I cannot flee. 
How could peace abide with me? 
117 



ii8 Overtones 

Since from Thee in heart estranged, 

If this instant, I, unchanged, 

Were in Heaven, Thou, God, dost know, 

Highest Heaven were deepest woe, 

I and it are variant so. 

God, O God ! Thy likeness give ; 

In and of Thee let me live; 

God, O God ! for sin atone. 

By Thy love awake my own : 

I must face Thy Great White Throne. 



BETTER HE 

LO, the Maker, better He, 
Greater than His works must be. 
Of the works the lowest stair 
Thought can scale but fainteth there. 

Bounds of sun-groups none can see; 
Worlds God droppeth on His knee; 
Galaxies that loftiest swarm 
Float before a loftier Form. 

Brighter He Who maketh bright 
Jasper, beryl, chrysolite; 
Lucent more than they, Whose hands 
Girded up Orion's bands. 

Mighty speed of suns and worlds, 
Mightier who these onward hurls. 
Strong is law, but He its source, 
Law of law and force of force, 
iig 



1 20 Overtones 

On the wheels of worlds He rides; 
In the conscience He abides ; 
Highest outmost, God alone 
Deepest inmost makes His throne. 

Thee with all our strength and heart, 
God, we love for what Thou art ; 
Conquered we, obedient now; 
Only, only perfect Thou. 



LOVE OF LOVE 

LOVE of love, so vast its grasp, 
Only God can round it clasp ; 
Only He can still us quite, 
Hungering for the Infinite. 

Duty done, the soul's fireside, 
Blest who makes its ingle wide ; 
He who hath it hath no chill. 
He may have it whoso will. 

Toss we must, and toss we ought, 
Until to that ingle brought ; 
Bliss hath he and only he 
Who in God becometh free. 

Inly always shall rejoice. 
Whoso loves the still small voice. 
Solitude's hushed secret — what? 
Solitude existeth not. 

121 



122 Overtones 

Good is love, but better who 
Giveth love its power to woo. 
Radiant more His face must be, 
Who transfigureth land and sea. 

Earth's vexed ages, lonely I, 
Kinship have in loyalty ; 
As God's pulses past us throng. 
Be their sound our marching song. 



HEAVEN AND HOME 

BREATH of God from Heaven^s hills, 
Fill our souls as music fills 
Harps ^olian. Every tone 
In lifers anthem make Thine own. 



Fill our homes, Thou God of might ! 
Goodness, beauty, truth, delight. 
In at all their windows pour. 
Enter Thou at every door. 

Friends of God our friends shall be ; 
Love we every land and sea. 
Both the silent wheeling poles 
And the universe of souls. 

Myriad homes by Heaven blessed 
Bind Thou round the sad earth's breast. 
One roof only is the sky ; 
Household one, humanity. 



124 Overtones 

Let our labor be a song, 
Wise, alluring, swift, and long. 
Kneeling on our fathers' graves, 
Pray we for the faith that saves. 

Be our only roof the sky 
And the hand of God Most High. 
Build we not upon the sands ; 
Ours a house not made with hands. 



GOD^S TIME NOW 

CHOOSE I must, and soon must choose 
Holiness, or Heaven lose. 
While what Heaven loves I hate, 
Shut for me is Heaven*s gate. 

Endless sin means endless woe. 
Into endless sin I go, 
If my soul, from reason rent. 
Takes from sin its final bent. 

Balance lost, but not regained. 
Final bent is soon attained. 
Fate is choice in fullest flower. 
Man is flexile — for an hour ! 

As the stream its channel grooves, 
And within that channel moves. 
So doth habit's deepest tide 
Groove its bed, and there abide. 
125 



126 Overtones 

Light obeyed increaseth Light, 
Light resisted bringeth night. 
Who shall give me will to choose, 
If the love of Light I lose? 

Speed, my soul ; this instant yield ; 
Let the Light its sceptre wield. 
While thy God prolongeth grace. 
Haste thee toward His holy face! 



CHRISTUS CONSUMMATOR 

IN the thunder, live and loud, 
In the sunlight and the cloud, 
Thou dost dwell and souls are free ; 
We the waves and Thou the sea — 
God, our Lord and Saviour be. 

God who wert and art to come. 
Of all spirits source and home. 
Life of life and soul of soul, 
In Thy breath the heavens roll — 
In Thy mercy make us whole ! 

As the air enswathes the cloud. 
So dost Thou all souls enshroud ; 
As within the cloud the air, 
Thou indwellest everywhere — 
Lord, returning rebels spare I 

By Thee filled, as air with light, 

Absolute and Infinite, 

We by Thee shot through and through, 

Bliss or woe in Thee renew — 

Fill us. Lord, as light the dew ! 



127 



CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR 

HOLY, holy, holy Cross, 
All else won I count but loss, 
Sapphire suns are dust and dross 
In the radiance of the Face 
Which reveals God's way of grace 
Open to a rebel race. 

Ransom He and ransomed we, 
Love and Justice here agree; 
Let the angels bend and see 
Endless is this mystery : 
He, the Judge, our pardon wins; 
In His wounds our peace begins. 

Looking on the accursfed tree. 
When we God as Saviour see. 
Him as Lord we gladly choose. 
Him as King cannot refuse, 
Love of sin with guilt we lose. 
So the Cross the soul renews. 
128 



Christus Consolator 129 

In His righteousness we hide 
Last long woe of guilt and pride ; 
In His Spirit we abide. 
Naught are we, our all is He ; 
Christ's pierced hands have set us free; 
Grace is this beyond degree. 

Glory His above all height ; 

Mercy, Majesty, and Might; 

God in man is love's delight ; 

Man in God of God hath sight ; 

Love is God's throne, great and white; 

Day in God hath never night. 



VOLCANO CRESTS 

WHEN the eagle and the sparrow 
Both shall build their fragile nests 
On the hot, uncertain edges 
Of unspent volcano crests, 

What shall purge a poisoned nation, 

What assuage its giddy heat? 
Who shall calm avenging earthquakes 

Boiling under bloody feet? 

When the land is young no longer. 
But grown old in chronic sins, 

When the strife of class with classes 
Both for bread and breath begins ; 

When the poor shall swarm with riot, 
And the magic checks of trade 

Stretch between the hungry worker 
And the work his hands have made ; 
130 



Volcano Crests 131 

When the social vultures thicken, 
And the strong the weak devour ; 

When the corpses of the people 
Strew the stairways up to power; 

When loud Faction sends its foxes 
Blazing through the standing corn, 

From the firebrands of the Furies, 
Who shall save a world forlorn? 

Through the ages crieth Wisdom, 

And to-day she crieth long : 
Sound of God's eternal pulses 

Make the nation's marching-song. 

Who beholds the hasting Judgment, 
Who now feels what angels see, 

Who in God as King has gladness. 
Only he may dare be free. 



SURSUM OCULOS 

THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS 

GOD the highest heaven overflows; 
In the contrite heart dwells He; 
Who finds here in God repose, 
Finds it in eternity. 

God outshineth starlit space, 
It a spark but He the whole; 

Instinct turns to Him the face, 
Upward looks the praying soul. 

Thou who makest instinct deep, 
Thou who calFst from far and nigh, 

With Thy work wilt promise keep, 
Pardon grant to loyalty. 

Stretch we hands toward the sky, 
God of souls and God of suns ; 

Thou dost prompt our wailing cry. 
Through us, too. Thy order runs. 
132 



Sursum Oculos 133 

With our foreheads in the dust, 

Over us Thy thunder rolls ; 
But Thy promises we trust, 

Thou hast peace for contrite souls. 

God of justice, God of grace, 

Rebels without ransom we ; 
Make our souls Thy dwelling-place, 

Lord of Hosts, our ransom be! 



SURSUM CORDA 

I 

THE FULFILLED DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS 

CHRIST, the Son of God, is born — 
Evermore to men draws near ; 
Lo ! His light brings earth its morn, 
Now burns God's Shekinah clear. 

As the noon outshines a star. 

So time's noon His glories drown; 

He whom prophets saw afar. 
He who is creation's crown. 

Sinless He our nature takes, 
Perfect God and perfect man ; 

His right arm our fetters breaks. 
In His wounds our peace began. 

Rebels Thou dost disenthrall, 
Measureless Atonement white ; 

Ransom hast Thou given for all 
Who in holiness delight. 
134 



Sursum Corda 135 

When we Thee as Saviour see, 
Sin Thou meltest from our souls ; 

Pardon prompteth loyalty ; 

Grace guilt's burden from us rolls. 

By Thy words we stand or fall, 
Show us God and show us man ; 

Thine the Kingdom over all, 
Finish what Thy Cross began. 



THE WORLD^S MARSEILLAISE 

NOW girt with lightnings, docile, fleet, 
There stands an angel, with his feet 
The one on sea and one on shore ; 
And Time henceforth shall be no more. 

All men are men and men are one. 
Join hands all zones beneath the sun, 
White, bronze and black and brown and red, 
All climates' tintings myriad. 

Like rainbow colors, all are kin. 
One God above, one Law within ; 
Man's sky with colors seven may glow. 
But colors seven make Heaven's bow. 

One sun is in our single sky, 
And underneath one family ; 
On earth so great and yet so small. 
All are for each and each for all. 

Let God's great order through men run, 
So pray the stars and moon and sun ; 
Amen, we answer, every one ; 
God's will in us be wholly done. 



136 



NOON OF NOONS 

GOD the sun, the dewdrops we, 
Lighteth every sparkle He; 
Him we drink whose boundless light 
Is perfection infinite. 

In His sunbeams one are we. 
Holy, holy, holy. He; 
Noon of noons is in His face, 
Endless justice, endless grace. 

He whose will the heavens roll, 
Upward leads the contrite soul ; 
To His chosen giveth He 
Power the sons of God to be. 

Heaven's high noon hath never night; 
Sunbeams weave all robes of white ; 
Evermore surrendered souls 
God's love crowns with aureoles. 

Saviour Matchless, King Divine, 
Light and Lightning, make us Thine; 
As through crystal drops the sun. 
Let Thy radiance through us run. 



137 



OPEN FURROWS 

ONE field the wheeling world. 
Vast furrows open lie; 
Broadcast let seed be hurled 
By us before we die. 

Winds, East or West, 

Let no tares fall ; 
Wide waft the best ; 
God winnow all. 

Heaven hath a single sun, 

All gates swing open wide ; 
All lands at last are one, 
And seas no more divide. 
In every zone, 

Arise and shine ; 
Earth's only throne. 
Our God, be Thine. 

Let types ideal grow, 

Shine Thou through all the race ; 
138 



Open Furrows 139 

All features beauty show 

If God flames through the face. 
Let all aspire ; 

Our sins consume ; 
Send tongues of fire, 
And all illume. 

On every desert rain, 

Make green earth's flintiest sands; 
Above the land and main 
Reveal Thy pierced hands. 
Thy Cross Heaven wins: 

Lift it on high ; 
And in his sins 
Let no man die. 



GOD OF NATIONS 

GOD of the nations rise, 
Fix on Thyself our eyes, 
Wisdom, Love, Might : 
Draw Thou as noon-tide nigh. 
Flood Thou the earth and sky ; 
Keen, white, pure, vast, and high, 
Let there be Light. 

God of our fathers' day, 
Make us as wise as they, 

Thy Truth our guide : 
Ours be Thy bugle call, 
One plan Thou hast in all. 
As the new ages fall. 

In us abide. 

God make our vision clear. 
Duty as freedom dear; 
Right all our wrongs : 
140 



God of Nations 141 

Strong in Truth gladly heard, 
Loyal to all Thy word, 
Nations with hope deferred, 
Fill Thou with songs. 

God in all faces shine. 

So make Thou all men Thine, 

Under one dome : 
Face to face, soul to soul. 
East to west, pole to pole, 
As the great ages roll. 

Be Thou our home. 



142 Overtones 



SUNS AND SPARROWS 

MANY an age God's globe has rolled, 
Many a star His palms enfold; 
Frailest birds, head under wing. 
Sleep in Him and wake to sing. 

God to angels giveth food ; 
Sheltereth He the sparrow's brood: 
Galaxies obey His call; 
Marketh He the sparrow's fall. 

Seas of suns to Heaven's dome 
Anthems roll as ocean foam ; 
Sparrows in the woodlands dim 
Sing their dawn and vesper hymn. 

Holy, holy, holy He, 
Light, life, love, and majesty; 
His infinities have song, 
Which eternities prolong. 



GOD IN MAN 

MANY harps, but one the breeze ; 
One the light on lands and seas ; 
One the air in many flames ; 
One our God in many names. 

Many waves, but one the sea ; 
Many leaves, but one the tree ; 
One the ocean, many storms ; 
One the life, but many forms. 

Many dew-drops in the sun. 
Source of all their sparkles one ; 
Light of light and Life of life, 
God with souls hath peace or strife. 

Many branches, one the vine ; 
Human we and He divine; 
We the flames and He the air; 
Who His power affront shall dare? 

Breathe within our breathing, Thou ; 
Beat within our pulses now ; 
Conscience of our conscience be, 
Soul of souls eternally. 



143 



FORECAST 

GOD only changeth not: 
The sun and moon, 
And earth's dim wheeling dot, 

I shall leave soon : 
Nor sky, nor land, nor sea. 
Abides with fleeting me ; 
I shall forgotten be 
Beneath the noon. 

God will remember me : 

To Him I go ; 
Which shall I choose to be, 

His friend or foe? 
Behind death's open gate, 
What destinies await 
My final love or hate, 

I soon shall know. 

Faith, Hope, and Love abide : 

God's perfect whole 
Is mine, though heavens wide 

Together roll. 
144 



Forecast 145 

His face I cannot flee. 
Complete Thy work in me ; 
Enrapture Thine with Thee, 
Soul of my soul ! 

My sun and moon and sky 

And sea and land 
And Home eternally 

Is God*s right hand: 
From it all blessings fall, 
And better He than all, 
And rapture is the thrall 

Of His command. 



HE SUFFICETH 

SOUL whom dazzled ages scan, 
Man in God and God in man, 
Who sees Him the Father sees, 
Who loves Him with God agrees. 

Bliss were it to see afar 
What time's coming wonders are; 
But One highest hath been here ; 
Higher never shall appear. 

Sinless soul with God made one. 
Seen but once beneath the sun. 
With that vision we, content, 
Futures veiled do not lament. 

Every star about Him wheels; 
Every penitent He heals ; 
Higher than the highest. He, 
Son and Soul of Deity. 

146 



He Sufficeth 147 

We are sinful and undone ; 
God and man the Christ makes one; 
Rebels, perjured, lawless, we; 
Ransom, Ruler, Healer, He. 

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
With Thy ransomed, heavenly host, 
Give us grace forevermore, 
Thee to know, obey, adore. 



WARP AND WOOF 

BEFORE He formed a star, 
Our God arranged our lot ; 
Our little lives were planned afar, 
When we as yet were not. 

Time hath no aimless strands, 
God warp and woof combines; 

Life's loom is in His holy hands, 
His shuttles know their lines. 

He loved us when as yet 
We had not seen the sun ; 

God's forethought is man's coronet, 
And love by love is won. 

He purposed what He sends, 
He knows what us awaits ; 

He marketh now the distant ends 
Of paths to hidden gates. 

148 



Warp and Woof 149 

All acts His eyes foresee 

And never choice constrain ; 
So willeth He that we are free 

His grace to lose or gain. 

His love hath filled the past, 

An ocean without shore ; 
Our purchased souls Him first and last, 

Love, trust, obey, adore. 



EVERMORE 

EVERMORE, forevermore, 
Wisdom, Justice, Love adore; 
Evermore, forevermore. 
Oceans they without a shore : 
They have been and yet will be ; 
They the waves and God the Sea. 

Evermore, forevermore. 

Space and Time and Truth explore ; 

Evermore, forevermore. 

Oceans they without a shore : 

They have been and yet will be ; 

Wears them as His vesture He, 

Evermore, forevermore, 

Find we finitude our bliss. 

Evermore we God explore. 

And yet know not all He is : 
Three in One and One in Three, 
Light, Life, Love, and Majesty. 
150 



Evermore 151 

Evermore, forevermore, 
Standeth God at every door; 
Evermore, forevermore, 
His pure eyes our souls explore: 

Lord of Hosts, our ransom be, 

Now and in Eternity. 

Evermore, forevermore, 
Enter Thou at every door ; 
Evermore, forevermore. 
Love of God is loftiest lore : 

Holy, holy, holy, He, 

And His service ecstasy. 



FLITTING WINGS 

BIRD that seeks a sunnier sky, 
On thy heart thy wings rely: 
Over land and over sea, 
God His promise keeps with thee; 
Never faithless, nature brings 
Fitting climes to flitting wings. 

Soul that fears God's judgment bar, 

Truth thy instincts see afar. 

So has feared each balanced soul. 

Since the orb began to roll. 

Souls are God's work. We shall see 

Judgment in eternity. 

Doom looks through the door of death. 
Evermore thy conscience saith : 
I am, God is, and in this 
Double truth is woe or bliss. 
Thou from God canst never flee. 
Friend or foe of His must be. 
152 



Flitting Wings 153 

Breath of God enkindles man, 
Instincts match their Maker's plan ; 
Wing to air He mates aright, 
Inborn faith to fadeless light. 
While we live, or when we die, 
God in man can speak no lie. 

Southward speed, through storm and calm. 

Out of snows to groves of balm : 

Wing, my soul, thy certain flight. 

Through the noontide and the night ; 

Over land and over sea, 

God his promise keeps with thee. 



IN EXTREMIS 

BETTER to go than stay, 
I would not live alway ; 
If pardon through God*s grace is won, 
Be heaven this hour begun. 

Almighty God, give peace, 

In swift or slow release ; 

My empty, frail, cold hand in Thine, 

Thy strength and sight are mine. 

The glory of Thy deeds 
Archangel's thought exceeds : 
Thyself, Thyself more glorious still — 
My bliss to do Thy will ! 

The world is out of joint ; 
Swift messengers appoint 
To set it wholly right, and I 
In serving them will die. 
154 



In Extremis 155 

And after death my soul, 

As the vexed ages roll, 

Do Thou as ransomed spirit send 

Man's miseries to mend. 

Fit mansions in the sky 

Hast Thou for loyalty : 

Life, hope, peace, strength, atonement now, 

My all in all art Thou ! 



MID-DAY 

FROM God I come, to God I go ; 
He made the East; He made the West; 
High holy noon, transform me so 
That I may find in radiance rest. 

Pilgrim between two ocean strands, 
I see both shores of narrow Time ; 

I hear Atlantic lash its sands, 
I see Pacific roll sublime. 

Vast outlook from life's Andes' height 

Includes the far Brazilian plain. 
But brings Peruvian shores in sight, 

And sunset's line beyond the main. 

As fast at morn the sun ascends. 

As fast at noon moves toward the west, 

As when at last his journey ends, 
And he in glory sinks to rest. 
156 



Mid-Day 157 

O wealth of noon ! O Andes* height ! 

I lift my anthem to the sky, 
And praise the God of noon and night 

For life and all its mystery. 

God fills all skies. All things are mine 

If I am His who moves my sun, 
And when it cuts the ocean line 

My day in God is but begun. 



ONE DAY IN SEVEN 

WHILE rests the race one day in seven, 
God opens wide the gate to Heaven ; 
He soothes the weary heart and brain, 
As silver moons rise, wax, and wane. 

A golden candlestick the week. 
Seven-branched its flames all upward seek 
God's face, but central is the flame 
Which bears the Sabbath's sacred name. 

Time's coming golden ages wait 
On work and worship, alternate; 
Toil gives the face heroic light ; 
And hallowed rest is holy might. 

Thou and thy servant both shall pause; 
Thou and the stranger. Equal laws 
Shall rule the race in toil and rest ; 
So brotherhood is born and blest. 

Creation and Redemption thou 
Shalt glorify, with blissful brow, 
And into God's own likeness grow; 
His Sabbaths into Heaven flow. 



158 



LAW AND LOVE 

HOLY SPIRIT, by Thy name 
Order out of chaos came ; 
As upon her nest the dove, 
Broodest Thou all worlds above ; 
Thy two wings are Law and Love. 

Lo ! above the Mercy-seat, 

Where the wings of cherubs meet, 

In the holy place a star, 

Prophecy of Christ afar. 

Crowns with flame God's judgment-bar. 

Christ the veil of flesh assumes, 
God in man our guilt consumes ; 
In Him Love and Justice meet, 
To Him run the suppliant's feet, 
Christ Himself the Mercy-seat. 

In the Pentecostal flame 
God reveals once more His name; 
159 



i6o Overtones 

Tongues of fire proclaim His will, 
Beams of dawn the nations fill, 
Love and Justice mingle still. 

Holy Spirit, make us thine ; 
As the noontide in us shine ; 
Be our Sun behind the sun, 
God with us, and Heaven begun; 
All Thy will in us be done ! 



DAWN AND SUNSET 

DAWN drives westward day by day ; 
When it passes, pause and pray : 
Sunset shadows mornward go ; 
Bow the reverent forehead low. 

Sacred night and day divine, 
Sunset and the sunrise line. 
Girdle all the wheeling globe, 
Summer^s, winter's, autumn's robe. 

Through the curves beneath thy feet 
Rolls the round world, silent, fleet : 
Sunbeams nations unify ; 
Men have but a single sky. 

So great Saturn rolls and sings. 
Day and night fly round his rings ; 
All the planets face the sun. 
And in God all worlds are one. 

Wheels of God, or fast or slow, 
End of paths at opening know : 
Rolling, sing; and singing, roll; 
Perfect is the coming Whole. 



i6i 



THE SOUL'S OUTCRY 

GOD would still remember me, 
Even should I cease to be ; 
Any leaf that ever fell, 
He who made remembers well; 
Of His works am I a part. 
He will bear me on His heart. 
Father, more than mother mild. 
Thou wilt not forget Thy child ! 

Many mansions God prepares, 
And for all His children cares; 
In my soul prediction lies 
Of unending destinies ; 
God a dwelling hath in me, 
And I shall not cease to be. 
Lord of all skies, calm or wild. 
Shelter Thou Thy helpless child ! 

Only Thou canst sin erase ; 
Match Thy justice by Thy grace. 
Peace grant Thou to loyalty ; 
Life, strength, bliss, atonement be ; 
And before Thy Great White Throne, 
Shield and ransom Thou Thine own. 
White in garments undefiled, 
Loyal make Thy lawless child ! 



162 



N 



SEALED ORDERS 

OW the Lord hath spoken to me, 
May no evil day undo me ; 
Lies before me clear and fair, 
Pathway up a mountain stair, 
Sunlight in the upper air. 

Many years Thy whisper moved me, 
Many years Thy right hand proved me ; 
Thou afar didst see to-day ; 
All the noontide hidden lay 
In the morning dim and gray. 

Many lands and many oceans. 
Many peoples in commotions. 
Thou hast shown me as a sign 
That Thy whisper is divine ; 
May Thy purposes be mine ! 

Evermore by Thee enshrouded, 
In the azure sky or clouded, 
163 



1 64 Overtones 

Let me follow Thy behest, 
Without hasting, without rest, 
As a star moves toward the west. 

Thou my helmet, falchion, leader, 
Lord and Saviour, Interceder, 
Both my left hand and my right. 
Fill with javelins of light 
And with ten archangels' might! 



ONE HARVEST FIELD 

THERE are no alien stars; 
The winnowing winds are free : 
The wafted word no bounds or bars 
Finds now on land or sea. 

All zones are one broad field, 
And one the fostering sky ; 

Best seeds the ripened ages yield 
On world-wide pinions fly. 

The mellow furrows roll 

Black from the brightening plough : 
Rejoice, alert, seed-sowing soul ; 

God's gardener art thou ! 

The endless coming years 
Thy seed-field are to-day : 

Only of tares have tireless fears ; 
Thy friends are rain and ray. 
i65 



1 66 Overtones 

One sows, another reaps, 
And both in fruit rejoice; 

The holy heart of springtime leaps 
To hear the autumn's voice. 

High human hearts are one, 
And one their God above ; 

And genial ever>^ star and sun 
To Faith and Hope and Love. 

After the Parliament of Religions. 



ATONEMENT 

SEARCHING sun and holy sky, 
God is great and heaven is high : 
Who can wash my red, right hand? 
This I ask of sea and land : 
Who from guilt can give release? 
After treason, where is peace? 

Lawless soul from reason reft, 
I my Father^s house have left ; 
Famished sit among the swine, 
I of lineage divine ; 
Sick in heart, and hand, and head. 
Perish here for want of bread. 

Penitent, abased, and low, 
To my Father I will go ; 
I no merit of my own 
Claim before His Great White Throne; 
Justly were I evermore 
Exiled from my Father's door. 
167 



1 68 Overtones 

Tidings blest from God I hear : 
Ransom He from guilt and fear! 
God in Christ atonement makes ; 
He no penitent forsakes. 
Grace is this beyond degree : 
Robe of white He giveth me ! 

All the galaxies His hand 
Holds as drifting grains of sand ; 
But in lowly hearts dwells He, 
And His wounds have set us free. 
Lo ! the Cross for evermore 
Exiles guides to Heaven's door. 

Vision dazzling star and sun, 
God and man in Christ made one, 
Let the Cross the worlds amaze. 
I am melted as I gaze : 
Thee I serve for evermore, 
Lord and Saviour, trust, adore! 

In the Parliament of Religions. 



CONTRASTS 

HE who builds the starry dome 
Has in contrite hearts a home; 
He whose planets never rest 
Feeds the fledglings in their nest; 
He who makes Orion tall 
Marks the fragile sparrow^s fall. 

He in whom the seas rejoice 
Has in man a still, small voice ; 
He whose hands the ages roll 
Knows the soul of every soul ; 
He who is consuming flame 
Finds in love His perfect name. 

He who rises from the dead 
Had not where to lay His head; 
He whose glory heaven reveals 
This in robe of flesh conceals ; 
King of kings, all thrones above. 
Dies to show atoning love. 
169 



1 70 Overtones 

Empty seems the world and cold? 
Slowly works divine unfold. 
Ice or sun, let little man 
Trust God's orbic, perfect plan. 
Frost and fire give bliss its wings ; 
In the glacier summer sings. 

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
With the ransomed heavenly host, 
Thee, one God, for evermore, 
I, Thy lowly child, adore. 
In the dew-drop dwells the sun ; 
Let my life with Thine be one ! 

In the Parliament of Religions. 



SHEEP AND WOLVES 

A WAR CRY FOR THE SALVATION ARMY 

PITY, Lord, the crippled poor, 
Age and childhood lacking bread ; 
Thou Who cam 'st our ills to cure, 

Hadst not where to lay Thy head; 
Lazarus at the rich man's gate 
Lift from out his low estate. 

Fill with love our callous clay. 

Melt our hearts of polished stone; 

Thou the Truth, the Life, the Way, 
Listen to Thy creature's moan : 

Dives teach to shun the flame 

Kindled by his evil name. 

Sluggards with their garden wall 

Broken through, by weeds overgrown, 

Rouse to reason's trumpet call: 
Man must reap what he hath sown. 

Famine falls to drones and fools ; 

Willing hands find fitting tools. 
171 



172 Overtones 

Wolves within Thy human fold, 

Turn Thou from their bloody quest ; 

Fiendishness in fetters hold, 
Serpents slay in east and west : 

Let Thy lightnings cleanse with flame 

All our heights and depths of shame. 

Prodigals with husks for bread 
Homeward call, to food divine ; 

Souls in sin and trespass dead. 
Raise to life and bliss in Thine — 

Lift Thy Cross on land and sea, 

Rich are all if one in Thee. 

On the occasion of General Booth's visit to Boston. 



A NATION'S LAMENT 

EIGHTY-FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF LINCOLN'S BIRTH 

THY wrath, O Lord, great furrows draws 
Across the guilty land ; 
In these, good seed of better laws 
Sow Thou with lavish hand. 

Thy holy earth we desecrate. 

Thy sacred sun we scorn ; 
New hearts, O God, in us create. 

And souls that love the morn. 

Our Father's hallowed house of prayer 

We make a den of thieves ; 
Greed's haughty height, a robber's lair, 

Thy lightning bolts receives. 

Once more, with whip of knotted cords, 

Purge Thou Thy sacred place ; 
Let rebels flee before Thy words. 

And penitents find grace. 
173 



1 74 Overtones 

Our altar fires their glow relax, 
Our lamps new radiance need ; 

But quench not, Lord, the smoking flax, 
Nor break the bruised reed. 

Our martyrs' blood cries yet to Thee, 

And coming ages call : 
Let lawless lives learn loyalty 

To God, our All in all ! 



OCCIDENT TO ORIENT 

OUT of heaven thy helmet take, 
Banners of the sunbeams make ; 
Land of rising Orient light, 
Speak from Fuji's holy height; 
Thou to choose the best wert born ; 
Deck thyself with dews of morn ; 
Praise the Lord of sky and sea, 
Thou His prophet art to be. 

Now the flowers and now the snow. 
Noons and midnights come and go ; 
Torches lighted at the stars 
Neither time nor tempest mars. 
Athlete clad in western mail, 
God has weapons that prevail ; 
At His feet thy laurels cast ; 
He is first, and midst, and last. 

Lord of every star and sun, 
Finish Thou Thy work begun ; 
Now by war's tormenting share 
Thou hast opened furrows fair; 
175 



176 Overtones 

Send Thy sunbursts to and fro, 
Seed of better ages sow ; 
Father, Son, and Spirit's name, 
Forth through Asia's ages flame! 

Overturn and overturn. 
Evil growths uproot and burn ; 
Born in home and not in herd, 
Let the children hear Thy word ; 
Lift the mother with the child, 
Foster manhood undefiled ; 
Light and Life, as Love, draw nigh ; 
Fill the whole Himalayan sky. 



FAITH, HOPE, LOVE 

IN the highest heaven's cope, 
Shineth far Faith's holy Hope; 
But the highest heaven above 
Reigns and sings Faith's holy Love. 

Whoso loves not Love and Light, 
Stars in all their courses fight ; 
Whoso hath in God no joy 
All the swords of Truth destroy. 

Whoso loveth God, obeys; 
Stars defend with all their ways ; 
Whoso hath Love, finds in this 
Faith and Hope and balanced bliss. 

Joy in God is holy Faith, 
Trust in Truth it f oUoweth ; 
Joy in God, all bliss above; 
God is Light and God is Love ! 

12 

177 



1 78 Overtones 

Glorious He beyond His deeds, 
Though His work all praise exceeds; 
All His stars we count but dross, 
In the glory of the Cross. 

Faith, and Hope, and Charity, 
Dawn of blest eternity, 
God*s refulgence lights our way; 
These the paths to perfect Day. 



FRIENDS FOREVER 

** I have called you friends." — ^John xv., 15. 

THOU livest and I live, 
Eternal Father, Thou ; 
To prodigals Thy spirit give, 
The kiss of heaven now. 

Were man a fleeting gleam 

Soon quenched in endless night. 

Less eager would Omniscience seem 
To woo him to the right. 

Why should Thy Spirit strive 
To make my soul Thy friend? 

Blest omen this that I alive 
Shall find in death no end. 

Thou lovest me, and yet 
Thou knowest man is dust ; 

My soul Thou never wilt forget, 
Thy faithfulness I trust. 
179 



i8o Overtones 

Thou many mansions hast ; 

Some humble door be mine ; 
On Thee my cares henceforth I cast, 

My life is hid in Thine. 

Redeemer evermore, 

The loyal live in Thee ; 
Thy love and grace exalt, adore, 

Through Thy eternity. 



A WORLD-WIDE PLAN 

IN covenant imperial, 
When Thou to Thee didst Abram call, 
In him all nations wouldst Thou bless 
The promise large, the deed no less. 

Age after age Thy plans endure. 
Thy promise and performance sure ; 
Lord Thou of skies and lands and seas, 
The past the future guarantees. 

The servants of Thy purpose. Lord, 
Our armor Thy accomplished Word, 
Thy victories vast make Faith elate, 
Thy conquering cross we celebrate. 

Thy chariot-wheels all ages are, 
The whole sky Thy triumphal car; 
The darkest shores shall see Thee yet, 
The Light foretold shall never set. 

After the Ecumenical Conference, New York, igoo. 



i8i 



UNSEEN LEADERS 

OUR fathers fared not forth alone, 
With sifted seed new lands to sow; 
With them came He, who has His Throne 
In Heaven, His footstool here below. 

The Holy Word our fathers bore: 

Its heroes stood upon their deck; 
Invisibly they paced the shore. 

Safeguarding Church and State from wreck. 

Together marched they toward the west ; 

Immanuel's star before them shone ; 
Storm-swept, they scaled each mountain crest : 

His crowned archangels led them on. 

Schools have they sown from sea to sea. 

And church-bells chimed from strand to strand ; 

Their falchions champion liberty ; 
Their wings beyond the seas expand. 

Lead, Lord of Hosts, our erring feet ; 

A cloud of witnesses sublime 
Keeps step with Thee, and no retreat 

Make they whose march with God keeps time. 



182 



EASTER ANTHEM 

REJOICE, forlo! the conquered grave 
Attests Immanuers power to save. 
His hand the rule of Chaos broke; 
His name the prophets clearly spoke, 
Foretold His reign from shore to shore ; 
He reigneth now and evermore. 

Vast victories past and vast to come, 
Of all our Life and Light the sum, 
His wisdom dazzles every age, — 
An Easter gloom were sacrilege ; 
Time's current gleams in all its waves, 
But only Christ has light that saves. 

On wheels above all heavens He rides, 
Yet in the contrite heart abides. 
High Easter dawn His cross illumes. 
Our ruler there our guilt assumes ; 
This holy hour the tomb makes bright. 
Its darkness now alluring light. 

Our vexed Earth hears His Father's Voice; 

Let listening, loyal souls rejoice: 

**This is my well-belovM Son'' ; 

His Easter crown our ransom won : 

Let all the stars His grace proclaim. 

All galaxies adore His name. 



183 



A CENTURY^S DAWN 

FAR flames abroad a Century's dawn; 
Its sapphire depths may nothing mar : 
Let earthly mists be all withdrawn, 

And Christ the new sky's Morning Star. 

We treasure gems from all the past, 
All heroes' souls of light and fire; 

We breathe their inspiration vast, 
To concord with their Lord aspire. 

Now onward, upward, heavenward run, 
And into Christ's full stature grow; 

The Morning Star becomes a Sun ; 
Beatitudes from worship flow. 

The day-dawn sings. The noon-tide comes. 

Our God Himself our dwelling-place, 
In His high house are many homes 

For all who, contrite, seek His face. 

With cherubim and seraphim, 

Hosannas lift to God on high ; 
Let all our accents echo Him 

Whose right hand is our panoply. 

THE END 



184 



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